


i loved rome more

by nymja



Category: Knights of the, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Background Bao-Dur/Jedi Exile, F/M, Flashbacks, Grey Revan, Malak wants her loving he wants her revenge, Revan knows she's Revan All Along, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2019-09-15 06:29:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16928211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: “What’s your name again?” He asks, after she’s suited up, after they’re running.“Sola,” she says.She is so very good at lying.--AU where Revan knows she's Revan the Whole Time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starforged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/gifts).



> for my dearest starforged for Christmas <3, thinking 3-4 chapters total!

**Endar Spire.**

Her eyes squeeze together before they open, taking a moment to focus on the ceiling above her. Metal plating-- durasteel, more than likely. _Ship,_ her brain thinks. This is a ship.

The cognitive dissonance is jarring, made worse by the screaming in her head. For a moment, she thinks it’s the girl’s fault-- she remembers the grey eyes, the full mouth pressed into a hard line, clammy fingers pressed against her forehead--but then they’re chirping, singing in a way that she’s all too familiar with. She’s on a ship. It’s under attack.

She sits, noticing she’s in her undersuit. It’s not her usual one, a nondescript brown. And she barely has time to take stock of her body, to realize what’s missing before the door slides open with a hydraulic hiss.

“ _The Endar Spire_ is under attack!” A stranger says, his urgency contagious-- it shapes the room, makes her go into a stance.

“What’s _The Endar Spire_?”

“My name’s Trask Ulgo,” he answers instead, without her having to ask. “We’re part of the Republic Fleet, and we have to protect Bastila!”

Bastila. She rolls the name around her tongue. Grey eyes. Yellow lightsaber. An anxiety that runs deep, deep within all the cells of her body. Weak, ultimately.

“What’s your name again?” He asks, after she’s suited up, after they’re running.

“Sola,” she says.

She is so very good at lying.

\--

Her body doesn’t quite fit right, after whatever it is they--this Bastila, her old teachers--have done. Her reflexes are slower, her stamina poorer. She uses a blaster, not a vibroblade, because she doesn’t want them to see. Because maybe she’s the same. Or maybe she’s worse. And if that’s the case, she’s the one who would rather not know.

“It’s the Jedi that was with Bastila!” Trask informs her as they round a corner.

She sees a woman she doesn’t recognize (why would she?) engaged in a spar with a Sith assassin. She doesn’t have a preference for who wins, but it’s ultimately a draw when the Jedi bests her opponent only to be killed by a blast.

“Those Jedi sure are something, aren’t they?” Trask asks. He does a lot of asking, this man.

She takes a moment, before she allows a small nod. They are.

\--

A man name Carth tells them where to go through a video channel. She absently takes in his image: stray lock of hair, dark eyes. His voice is what sticks in her head. There’s anger underneath it. Simmering.

Trask is dead, which is fine. She watches him fall dispassionately after attempting to hold off two Sith assassins. Once he hits the ground, the Siths’ masked, hidden faces turn toward her.

She stares at them, _through_ them.

They walk away.

\--

Her luck has always been disastrous or miraculous, depending on who was drawn into it. As such, it’s not surprising that she gets the last escape pod. That it barely leaves the ship in time. That it has a miraculous trajectory down onto a planet she doesn’t quite remember the name of below. (What a scout she is).

But before the pod jettisons out into space, she holds onto her restraints. There is something at the edge of her thoughts-- broken, angry. Serrated edges holding a man together. She has felt this brand of rage before, knows it as well as she knows who she still is despite their attempts to take it from her.

 _Hello again,_ she thinks across the cosmos, eyes trained on the dreadnaught that is slowly overtaking them as the pod is freed into space.

Her mind, a foggy, disjointed thing, works quick enough to draw the trajectory that exists between she and him, this angry force in a man’s clothing.

_Looks like you’re not rid of me yet._

**Taris.**

They’re stranded, her and Carth Onasi. He glares at her with open mistrust, and she gives him a story in return. Her name is Sola Kenn. She’s a scout, and yes, she _does_ just have a way of figuring out how to survive.

One of these three things is even true.

As they traverse the city, searching for the girl, she feels _him_. He is, as always, an incessant and needy thing. Demanding to be fed--with attention, with power, with affection. She’s a voyeur inside his mind, and although it’s a weak connection, it’s one neither of them can be rid of.

Despite his better efforts, apparently.

“What is it?” Carth asks. His voice is a rasp. Sometimes she sees him staring at her, and then looking away as if he’d rather he didn’t. She doesn’t know if that’s embarrassment or shame on his end. Doesn’t have time to parse it out as her mind escapes her.

“Just something humming in my ear,” she explains. Out there, in the dark, he’s there. She can feel him looking for something he doesn’t think to search for.

Carth sends her a slow look. “Probably an after effect of the explosion,” he offers in that cagey, tired tone.

She nods, closing her eyes. “Probably.”

\--

Carth sleeps, and she thinks.

Force meditation is more purposeful than dreams, clearer and easily retained. She hasn’t truly _slept_ in years. Eight, six, four, two hours is too many wasted in her life. And so instead she crosses her legs on top of an unmade bed, closes her eyes, and lets her mind drift.

It goes to a memory.

It’s a short one, simple. In it, she’s walking across the courtyard. He’s next to her, smiling wide and laughing at all the right places in her story about kath hounds and Vrook. The sun’s setting, filtering through the filmy leaves of the courtyard’s central tree. Her skin is bathed in oranges and pinks, her mood is light, and she catches him staring at her whenever her story pauses.

They’re young. They’re naive. So she asks: “What is it?” because she truly doesn’t know, and he looks away.

When she leaves the trance, Carth tells her about the end of the Civil War. Malak turned on his Master. Sprang a trap that let a strike team (grey eyes, clammy fingers) onto Revan’s flagship vessel to assassinate her.

“Hm,” is all she says in response.

\--

Their group grows: Mission, a teenager, and her companion Zaalbar. They are somehow fresh-faced and green despite living in the slums. There is, maybe, a part of her long buried that looks at Mission at thinks about the dreams she used to have for the galaxy.

Together, they find the girl. She stares at them from behind a flickering, yellow cage. And in return she stares back like she did for the Sith assassins aboard _The Spire_. At her grey eyes, her full lips pressed into a line.

 _You tried to take something from me,_ she thinks. Her eyes don’t leave the girl’s--Bastila’s. She wilts under them. _But you are not enough. You cannot carry it, can you?_

Bastila swallows hard, and demands an escape plan. And she carries it through, stages a rescue for the girl. Mainly because she does not yet understand her role in this, why she’s still alive and still intact, and would like to see where the path goes.

It’s always been an inherent flaw, her curiosity.

\--

They meet Canderous. And he, unlike Carth, looks at her without shame or embarrassment. In her, she thinks he hears the echoes, sees something he wants in them.

She and Canderous spend late nights at the workbench in the ship he stole from his former employer. He routinely asks her for war stories and she pretends not to know what he’s talking about. Makes him explain every Mandalorian misstep to her, as if it’s the first time. Her entire life, she has found it helpful to know what others think of their own failings.

They sit together, and whether he realizes it or not, Canderous gets closer every evening-- a piece of debris pulled in by the rotation. During these evenings, she adds things to her blaster: scopes, hilts, carbines. If he were to look close enough, at her gun instead of her face or body, he’d realize that she does it with an efficiency that speaks to military training. Like Carth, she supposes he is handsome.

“You don’t handle yourself like a merc,” he says pointedly, eyes glinting.

“Neither do you,” she replies, clipping a heat sink into place. He smiles at the sound, war-like and with teeth.

\--

They escape Taris before the bombardment. When it begins, she feels him again. He is screaming like twisted metal, he is burning. He doesn’t know yet what it is that has slithered under his skin, and wrongfully attributes it to Bastila. She knows that she haunts him, knows that he can’t let go of her. Just like she can’t let go of him.

 _You tried, Squint,_ she thinks sadly. _But you, more than anyone, know what it takes to kill me._

_And deep down, you know you haven’t done it yet._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is likely going to get a ratings and chapter count bump :'|

**In dreams.**

Somehow, she feels tired. Maybe it’s because they’ve weakened her, maybe it’s because she is technically someone else. Sola Kenn needs physical rest. Perhaps Sola Kenn even dreams. 

Space is empty outside her viewport, the ship flies steadily, and before she knows it her eyes are closing.

\--

_ There has never been a moment in her life without Alek in it. Her earliest memories are of him: a year older, taller. He had stared at her with curiosity when she arrived from wherever it was she was from, had trailed after her like a shadow as she went to Temple, to the training areas, to the courtyard, to the fields.  _

_ “What’s your name?” He asks with missing teeth.  _

_ She tells him. _

_ And from then on, they are inseparable.  _

-

_ They have their first fight when she is thirteen. At that age she is all rage and hot air, scraped knees and an expanding connection to the Force that she doesn’t know what to do with. Master Arren Kae does not understand her in the way she wants-- she only has chastisement instead of praise, questions instead of answers. It only fuels her anger more, her bristling discontent at her surroundings. The stillness, the quiet of Dantooine is too suffocating.  _

_ And her inability to wear something that doesn’t fit begins to slowly manifest itself as rebellion. _

_ “Yes, child?” Vandar’s voice responds evenly when she raises her hand during their daily contemplation. It is typically not a time for questions, and when she speaks several heads turn toward her.  _

_ Including Alek’s, his brows furrowed. _

_ “I don’t want to do this,” she says.  _

_ Vandar only stares in return, waiting. _

_ The silence stretches. Her eyes meet his, challenging. _

_ “Can I leave?” _

_ At the question, several of the other padawans exchange nervous glances. This behavior is in-line for younglings, but for them? Unheard of. Disrespectful. Arrogant. _

_ Vandar only gives a soft hum. “If you feel you must.” _

_ Her chin tilts up before she nods, storming away from the courtyard and out into the plains.  _

_ - _

_ “What was that?” Alek accuses after he finds her. It’s dark now, the sky an inky blue-black.  _

_ She lies on her back in the tall grass, tracing the paths the stars make with her fingers. “I hate it here,” she lies. She’s very good at lying, even at this age. _

_ “You do not!” His voice is sharp enough that she spares him a glance. _

_ Alek stands over her, fists clenched at either side. His jaw is clenched, immovable in a way that reminds her of metal.  _

_ “Yes I do,” she protests, “I hate it here and I’m going to leave as soon as I can!”  _

_ “This is our home!” _

_ “It’s  _ your  _ home!”  _

_ “What is that supposed to mean?” His brows are drawn together. _

_ She’s hurt him. Her eyes widen at the realization. But she’s also a proud, scrawny thing, so instead of apologizing she just looks up into the sky again. Face scrunched. Pointedly not looking at him or his face. _

_ Alek doesn’t say anything, but she hears his boots crunch the grass as he leaves. She spends the night outside of the Enclave, eyes burning as she traces stars one by one by one. _

_ - _

_ The next morning, she sits next to him at breakfast. She hasn’t slept, from the looks of it neither has he. Wordlessly, he scoops synth porridge into her bowl. Silently, she accepts it and lets the side of her arm rest against his. _

_ - _

_ “I’d go with you, if you leave,” he whispers the next night. _

_ The two of them lay side-by-side in the grass, tracing the stars together.  _

_ “I wouldn’t leave you behind,” she promises.  _

_ \-- _

She wakes up, head pounding. She presses the heel of her hand to her temple, trying to draw in steady breaths. Her body is electrified, as though she’s injected some of Canderous’s stims straight into her veins. And the last thing she wants to do is stay in this bed, to fall asleep again. 

So she kicks off the covers and heads out into the body of the  _ Ebon Hawk _ .

\--

Carth is awake, slumped over in his pilot’s chair. Grief and anger hang over him like nets, and she wonders if he realizes how much both of them guide his actions for all his posturing.

“Can’t sleep?” He asks, as she sits down in the co-pilot’s seat. 

Her eyes stare out of the viewport. “Where are we going?”

“Dantooine,” he says. 

For a moment, her facade drops. She’s never been good at mastering her facial expressions-- and so her lips part, her eyes widen. All she can manage is a single sound, choked out.

“Why?”

Carth sends her a curious look. “Bastila’s suggestion. She thinks…” And his head tilts to the side. “She thinks the Council might be able to help you.”

“Help me,” she echoes in disbelief. 

Carth looks into the mug of his caf, seeming distinctly uncomfortable. “She...mentioned she’s been seeing your dreams.” 

The grass. The open skies. She closes her eyes.

“Tell her,” she says carefully, before she starts extracting herself from the chair. “To stay  _ out _ .”

Carth eyes her. That look again. “You know you don’t have to go.”

She eyes him back. Waiting. Maybe even curious. 

He coughs at the attention. “I’ve got more caf if you want it.”

What she doesn’t want is to go back to sleep. And so she takes the peace offering for what it isn’t, and falls into a comfortable silence with the older man. They both watch the stars, neither of them blinking.

\--

She dozes off in the chair.

\--

_ Alek is leaving for the first time when he turns sixteen. It isn’t permanent, just a short mission to Mon Calamari, but it feels like betrayal and panic and she  _ needs  _ him to stay. Because he doesn’t get to go first. It ruins her plans of escape.  _

_ “Don't go,” she tells him, as they work through their pre-sparring forms.  _

_ He doesn’t turn to face her, keeping his gaze straight ahead. “It’s good for us to seek our own paths.” _

_ “That sounds like Vrook talking.”  _

_ Alek pauses at the name of his Master. Then continues through the stretches. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea.” _

_ In her pose, her fists clench tightly. “Because you think you don’t need me.” _

_ “That’s not it.” _

_ “What is it, then?”  _

_ Alek stops the pretense, arms falling to his sides as he turns. She drops her stance as well. He looks at her, and it’s the same look from when she told him stories last night.  _

_ “I.” He looks away, at the ground. It makes something angry simmer down into her chest. “I need time away from here.” _

_ “ _ Why? _ ” _

_ “Because I’m confused.” _

_ “About what? _

_ “You!” He snaps.  _

_ Her eyes narrow. She doesn’t understand. “What is there to understand about me?” _

_ Instead of answering, he turns and storms away, shoving over one of the dummies they use for training.  _

_ She watches him go, frowning. _

_ \-- _

_ He leaves the next morning and she doesn’t say goodbye. Instead, she seeks out Kae. Demands to know what it is that’s bothering her only friend. _

_ “Foolish child,” her Master only says and oh how she  _ hates  _ her in moments like this. “Things change with age. You’ll see it, as he sees it, in time.” _

_ She doesn’t see anything. Just another person who wants to get in her way. “Nothing’s going to change.” _

_ “You can’t stop it.” _

_ “Yes,” she snarls, “I can.” _

_ She can stop anything. She can stop the whole universe, if she wills it hard enough. _

_ \-- _

_ When he returns, she’s waiting for him: arms crossed, face scowling. _

_ “Well,” she says with a coldness she doesn’t feel, “Did you figure it out?” _

_ Alek stares at her, eyes red-rimmed. It takes him a few moments to fight down whatever it is he  _ actually  _ wants to say. _

_ “No,” is all that comes out. He steps closer. He is taller now, limbs still lanky but not as much as they have been in the past.  _

_ She frowns. “Then what was the point?” _

_ Before he can answer, Vrook exits the freighter. “Don’t you have meditation to get to,” he grumbles, looking directly at his apprentice.  _

_ Tightly, Alek nods. As soon as he leaves, Vrook sends her a look of pure derision.  _

_ “And  _ you,”  _ he accuses. “What’s this I hear about asking for a new Master?” _

_ She looks up, meets his gaze. “Kae isn’t enough for me.” _

_ Vrook stares at her for a long time. In the Force, she feels something unknown to her. Fear. He’s afraid. _

_ “Get back to your lessons,” he growls, lifting a back over his shoulder and storming into the Enclave’s entrance. _

_ \-- _

The next morning she is tired and an old anger is stirring in her that she had thought long buried. 

Bastila invades her space, takes a seat across from her and pointedly ignores the caf pot in the middle of the table. 

She looks up.  _ Thief,  _ she thinks. Her fingers tighten around the mug.

“We have a connection,” Bastila begins. She is skittish around her, and for good reason even if she’s not aware of it. “That is why I saw your dreams. I wasn’t snooping.”

She does not know what to make of the younger woman’s explanation. Instead, she sips at her caf. 

Bastila tries to meet her gaze and fails. “The Council can help you.”

She takes a long sip of caf, making sure it slurps. 

Bastila purses her lips, before making an annoyed retreat.

\--

_ She is seventeen, and has been through three Masters. Her connection to the Force is changing, her perception of it as effortless as breathing or making her heart beat. It frightens some of the other padawans, she thinks. Unlike Alek, she has never made friends easily. They keep their distance, pretend to be happy about her abilities and her skills as she charges far, far ahead of them all. _

_ Only Alek means it, when he’s impressed. Only Alek stays by her side.  _

_ They have taken a break from training to go to a river bank. It’s one she found, a few months ago. It cuts through the plains, a gentle sound that she likes. That helps her calm the raging Force inside of her.  _

_ The weather is warm, bordering on hot, and so she peels off her outer robes, her tunic. Soon she’s just in her trousers, rolled up to the knee, and her breast band. She doesn’t think anything of it, doesn’t realize that she is attractive and that the distance from her peers is born out of awe, maybe even reverence, instead of dislike. _

_ That her best and only friend thinks he’s in love with her. Not the love of a Jedi. Something else, something stronger and darker and far, far more selfish. _

_ So it’s a surprise, then, when her thoughts accidentally brush up against his, that she finds out: he watches as sweat from her neck rolls down between her breasts. He thinks about her as a woman. He’s curious about her body, about his body. How they might fit.  _

_ He doesn’t know that she’s uncovered his secret, because she pulls away as fast as she can. He looks at her, concerned, when she sits on the side of the bank instead of diving in like she normally does. _

_ “What is it?” He asks. His grey eyes are wide and brighter in the afternoon light.  _

_ She doesn’t know. So she only rests her cheek on the top of a knee, closes her eyes, and lets the sun warm the skin that still feels like it can’t contain everything within her. _

_ Maybe, she never has to tell him what she's seen simmering inside his mind. Maybe that's for the best. _

\--

“Cagey about the Jedi?” 

They are almost to Dantooine. And she’s startled by Canderous’s voice, something that doesn’t sit well with her. Even only a few months ago, she would have been able to know where he was anywhere on the ship, at anytime. 

Now, weakened as she is, she only catches the surface feelings. He’s interested in her. Attracted.

She runs a hand through her hair. “No,” she answers truthfully.

Canderous raises his brows, kneeling down into a hunch where she sits on the floor. It’s a terrible attempt at meditation--born out of the desire to not sleep. Not dream.

“You look rough,” he offers.

“So do you.”

“Always.” 

She... _ likes  _ Canderous. His unabashed ownership of his sharp edges and taste for violence. It’s familiar to her, when nothing else on this ship is. 

“You’re wound up,” he observes, and she sees that glint in his eyes again. “So let’s settle something.”

She only raises an eyebrow.

“I want to see how long you can last.”

She raises the other brow. “In what?”

“A spar.”

\--

They fight. And it’s a brutal, ugly thing. Neither of the other gives affordances, or pulls back. When they are done, they collapse with their backs to the metal flooring, both covered in sweat and panting heavily. Her lip is split and his eye is already starting to swell.

“That,” he breathes, “was incredible.”

“Your left jab is pathetic,” she says. It was what had given her the split lip.

He lets out a bark of a laugh, “Only for you, Sola.”

Even with her intuition tempered, it’s not hard to sense that he’s thinking about sex. Fighting and fucking, unsurprisingly, go hand in hand for someone like Canderous.

She entertains the thought, for a moment. He’s handsome. Would let it go at being casual. 

But he just called her Sola. 

“Got somewhere to be?” He asks from the floor as she stands and grabs her outer robe.

“Not really,” she answers, and her clear dismissal makes him smirk.

Mandalorians have always been gluttons for punishment; drawn to fights they won’t win.

\--

_ She’s eighteen. Alek is sleeping beside her, his body stretched out in one of the healers’ chambers. He’d had a bad mission, and she knows without having to be told that his injuries are  _ Vrook’s  _ fault. She sits beside him, watching as his chest rises and falls. _

_ He’s safe now, she knows this. His life is duller but still vibrant in the Force. _

_ Still, she reaches out. And, in the ultimate act of rebellion, she intertwines their fingers for the first time. Lets her thumb run across his scabbed-over knuckles. She is the bigger Force between the two of them, but here, in this moment, she feels smaller. _

_ “No one will hurt you again,” she lies. _

\--

The  _ Ebon Hawk  _ descends onto Dantooine’s rolling, grassy surface. She watches the ground grow closer from the viewport, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Welcome home,” she whispers to herself as the ship rocks to a stop.


	3. Chapter 3

**Dantooine.**

Carth and Bastila, unsurprisingly, go ahead straight to the Enclave. But she takes her time, eyes searching the place she never meant to return to. 

It is exactly the same. Same grass. Same sun. Same taste in the air and same dirt under her boots. 

She stops when she gets to the courtyard. Tilts her head back to look up at the center tree. Her mind, unbidden, remembers this tree: it is where she and Alek used to play, where their meditation was held with Master Vandar. It is also where Alek stood, being her voice, as he called out to the young Jedi. Warned them about the war. Begged them, on her behalf, to enlist. 

Beside her, Canderous scoffs. “Ugly thing, isn’t it?”

She hesitates, then presses the pads of her fingers against the bark.

“It has its charms,” she concedes.

He snorts. “It's a dirty farm planet full of weaklings. Only thing good the Jedi ever did was give us Revan.”

She goes still, but her eyes drift to take in his profile. He’s scowling.

“What do you mean?” She asks carefully.

Canderous is looking at something far away. “You should’ve seen her. A true force to be reckoned with. A leader. A worthy opponent.” He doesn’t smile, not quite, but he turns to her and she senses something like admiration drifting through him. “We Mandalorians used to have a saying: better death by Revan’s hand, than surrender.”

She takes in this information as carefully. After a moment, she turns.

“It’s not much of a saying,” she says levelly, before she steps past him, and toward where she knows the Council will be waiting for her.

\--

_ They are grown, now. Adults in their own right and fully Knighted. Unlike others, who have left for Coruscant, she and Alek always find their way back to Dantooine after a mission. They sit on her modest bed in her bare, nearly Arkanian quarters. Alek leans back against the wall, and she folds her legs under her. _

_ “We have to go,” is all she says. They’ve been sitting in silence for nearly an hour, now.  _

_ Her only friend frowns. “To do so is to disobey the Council.” _

_ Her dark eyes slide to his and hold them.  _

_ “I’ll never listen to the Council.” _

\--

She stands before them once more: Vandar, Vrook, Zhar Lestin. It’s the height of hypocrisy, she thinks. For them to stand in front of her and pretend they don’t know who she is. To act like they didn’t have a hand in creating her. She keeps her eyes trained on Vrook the whole time. The old man defers to Zhar, the Twi’lek saying forgettable things to her about training, her Force sensitivity, what they’ve heard from their puppet Bastila.

She stands before them with arms crossed and a hip popped to the side. A cold and hard hatred boiling under her skin. These men are cowards. They always have been, and they want to put a leash on her in the guise of reform.

Vrook stares at her, a permanent frown in his aging face. “And what say you? Are you interested in the teachings of the Jedi?”

She’s surpassed the teachings long ago. But if they are cowards, she is a liar. And so she plays her part in this misguided attempt at redemption: she pretends to be shocked, pretends she doesn’t know what she is.

They send her back to the Ebon Hawk to await their decision. But she already knows what it’s going to be.

Because for all of their sanctimonious sermons, they aren’t about to relinquish the illusionary control they have over her destiny. It’s the first time they’ve even come close to holding the heart of the Force.

\--

_ She is not close to the other Jedi. She can’t do this without him, and tells him as much. _

_ “You’d want me to send my friends to war,” he says, looking and sounding tired. _

_ “Only if you think this war is unnecessary,” she replies, searching his face intently. Her fingers find his forearm, hold tightly around it. “Is that what you believe?”  _

_ “You know I can’t think clearly when you’re involved,” he mutters. _

_ It’s the closest he’s ever come to confessing, and she takes a half-step back, although her fingers--her touch--doesn’t leave his skin. Her mark on Alek is just as clear as the blue tattoos that adorn his head, neck, and back. And apparently, just as visible. _

_ She closes her eyes. Breathes in the scent of grass. In her mind, she sees the steps she must take. She’s seen those steps, for awhile now. Like any game of dejarik, there are both small and large pieces that must be sacrificed. _

_ She wonders which they’ll be. Because, if she knows anything at all, she knows that they will be together in this.  _

_ “There are worlds burning,” she argues. “The Council isn’t doing anything to stop it.” _

_ Alek’s other hand moves slowly to cover her own. “And so you must?”  _

_ “If not me,” she says evenly, “Then who?” _

_ Alek meets her gaze. And after a moment, he leans down to press his forehead against hers.  _

_ “It seems you have finally outgrown here.” _

_ She closes her eyes. “This place has been too small for awhile, Alek. For both of us.” _

\--

She dreams of them, as they were before. She sees herself as though an outsider: short despite her stature, eyes dark and determined as she walks forward into the caves.

Alek, she sees as well. He is in the orange and red robes he favored during the war, and he dutifully follows.

The star map unfolds, and the her of her dreams does not look away from it. The planets reflect in her eyes.

And, because she is a voyeur, she notices for the first time that Alek does not look away from her. That he watches her hungry expression with trepidation.

That map, she knows, was the beginning of their end.

\--

_ Alek stands in the courtyard, and she listens as he speaks from her place against the courtyard’s tree. He is able to voice the conviction that she feels, but cannot articulate. He’s her voice. The only one she can trust to do it.  _

_ Gradually, more and more Knights and Padawans, fueled by Alek’s speeches, begin to seek her out. They want her counsel, her advice. They have questions about the Mandalorians, how they fight, what they want. _

_ And so she begins to align her pieces. Alek, as always, at her side. _

\--

They stay on Dantooine for weeks. And, irony of ironies, they train her as they did nearly three decades ago. She meditates. Spars. Contemplates philosophies. 

As much as she’s loath to admit it, parts of her start falling back into place. Her body, her mind. Her memory. It all begins its slow circulation through her, bringing to life the parts that have atrophied.

“Your progress is remarkable,” Bastila says to her, after they’ve finished levitation exercises.

She’s always been remarkable--a burning brand. But she smiles, accepts the thief’s praise. 

“I still have further to go.”

_ \-- _

_ “And so you’ve returned.” Kae sounds older, wearier. She sits in the center of the old ruins to the east of the Enclave. She smiles underneath the hood that obscures much of her face. “It seems as if I am to be your first and last Master, after all.” _

_ “I’m not here for your training,” she says, stopping before the older woman.  _

_ “If not that, then what?” _

_ She frowns. In truth, she does not know what has compelled her to seek out Arren Kae. She is not the strongest of her long string of Masters. Nor, despite her wishes, the wisest. She does not know the histories as well as Vandar, or the ways of battle like Kavar. But she senses something about the older woman-- a role, maybe, that she has yet to play. _

_ “Tell me who I must bring,” she says. And somehow, these feel like the right words to say. _

_ Kae looks like she is about to ask another question, or perhaps be deliberately obtuse. But then she answers. _

_ “Meetra Surik.” _

_ She balks at the name. “She’s a child.” _

_ “Less than you know. And her destiny is an echo of your own.” _

_ She thinks of Meetra, nearly ten years her junior. A bright, naive thing and mediocre Jedi with mediocre abilities. But she does have  _ something.  _ Something like Alek. The capability to form attachments easily. It is, perhaps, the only thing that she lacks. Sheer power does not result in friendship, in love, after all.  _

_ Finally, she nods. “We won’t meet again.” _

_ “No,” the woman who will become Kreia says. “We will not.” _

_ \-- _

The Masters laughably decide she’s ready for her trials. She unearths part of her mind long since buried, and recites the code. She chooses her lightsaber. It is nothing like the two she crafted and held before. She mourns their loss, vows to recreate them as soon as she has the proper resources.

Then, she is sent to find a Dark Jedi.

Juhani is anger and raw power. She is wounded, and because of that quick to lash out. For a moment, she contemplates killing her. It would be most efficient.

But something stills her hand. Bastila does most of the talking, then. Tells her of the Council’s mercy as she stands by, silent. Contemplative.

The Kathar runs into the distance. And she thinks she’s found someone who has use.

\--

_ Meetra is the last Jedi to agree to leave with them. They set the departure shortly after.  _

_ She walks to the tree before the sun rises the day they are to leave Dantooine. Places her fingertips against it. _

_ “There is no coming back, after this.” _

_ She closes her eyes. Because of course Alek is already awake. Already waiting for her. It, for just a moment, sends something warm through her. _

_ But she thinks of what is to come, and the warmth quickly hardens into something else. She withdraws her touch from the tree. _

_ “I’m counting on it.” _

\--

She retraces old steps. Conquers old battles.

Ultimately, the ancient map unfolds before her. Planets she has once held in her hands dance in front of her. Its glowing, bright center reflects in her eyes.

“Incredible,” Bastila breathes out beside her.

It is. 

And it’s hers, once again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Tatooine: HK-47.**

“Uh, Big Z, what’s happening?”

The wookiee lets out a long string of growls that essentially equals a shrug.

She’s doubled over, arms crossed against her stomach and water beginning to sting her eyes.

Behind her, Carth’s lips pull into what might be a smile. Mission, however, looks unnerved.

Her laughter echoes around the droid store. It’s an odd sound-- raspy, unused. She’s laughed before, of course, but it’s been so long since it’s been genuine. Uncontrolled.

The droid dealer, an Ithorian named Yuka Laka, looks annoyed. He turns to Carth, who clearly seems the most responsible of the group. “Is she going to buy it or not?”

The pilot scratches the back of his neck. “Honestly, I have no idea.”

“Protocol droid,” she repeats, her stomach beginning to hurt. “ _Protocol_ -!”

“That’s it,” Mission says with a hand on her hip. “She’s lost it.”

“Snide query,” speaks the red-tinted droid for sale, “Is this meatbag rotten?”

Mission glares at it. “Hey! Don’t talk to her like that!"

“Apologies,” says her old creation, “ _Sincere_ query: Is this meatbag rotten?”

A loud, unapologetic snort fills the shop.

\--

_“What are you doing?”_

_She doesn’t turn around from the parts spread out on her personal workbench. She hasn’t slept. Not for days. She’s in nothing but her underwear, hands mechanically moving with single-minded focus._

_She hears his footsteps cross the room. Feels him stand behind her, watching her hands as they build._

_“What is this?” His voice is low, in her ear. It’s too much noise. Everything’s too much_ noise.

_“It’s a different approach,” she snaps, just so he’ll go away. Just so she can be alone, without thoughts. Just something empty, manufacturing._

_He lets out a long exhale. “There was no other choice.”_

_Her hands go still. Clench._

_“You did what you had to.”_

_“Shut up,” she demands, voice ragged and soft and all the more dangerous for it._

_“Meetra...made her own decision, in the end.” He moves closer. Puts his hand on her bare shoulder. It’s. Too much._ Noise.

_“Don’t. Touch me.”_

_He says her name. “Malachor was the right thing to do-”_

_“Get away!” She screams. And something in her breaks, that dangerous piece hanging on by a thread in her body. It tears off, manifesting itself as pure Force._

_It shoves him away. She hears him collapse into a wall._

_Slowly, she turns. She’s breathing hard. Angry._

_Alek’s fallen to the floor, trying to catch his breath from the violence she just enacted. When he looks up at her, there’s something cold in his gaze that she’s not used to seeing directed at her._

_Once again, she’s unable to say sorry. Once again, he storms away._

\--

“I’m guessing you’re not going to let me in on the joke,” Carth says.

It’s a few hours later, and she’s covered in grease and oil. She’s repaired HK-47 in the ways that matter: targeting, mobility, processing. Once it came time to alter its memory core, she stopped. In a strange way, she has missed her old companion. But it wasn’t the time to tell them of who she was, if that time was ever going to come. And restoring its memory meant liability she couldn’t risk.

He finds her sitting crossed-legged on the floor, organizing her tools, a hydrospanner in her hair. She doesn’t think anything of it, doesn’t realize how different _this_ version of her is to the crew of the _Ebon Hawk._ Finding HK-47 has let her simply _be_ for a few hours: a single-minded task at hand instead of so many pieces on the dejarik board.

“What do you mean?” She says, strangely not minding the intrusion. Despite herself, she is growing used to some of them. Not friendly. But acclimated, in her own way.

Carth’s eyes go to her hair, the hydrospanner in it, and something soft enters his eyes even though his tone doesn’t change. “The droid. Not sure why it was so funny.”

“Why would you?” It’s a question that's out before she can stop it. A slip. A crack. Instantly, she feels herself harden.

“Never a straight answer, is it?”

She looks up, meeting his gaze. After a few seconds, she gives a slow shake of her head. “I don’t know why any of them matter to you.”

He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Because we’ve been on this mission for almost two months now, and I don’t know a thing about you.”

“About as much as I know of you,” she says, tone level.

Carth stares at her for another second, before he shakes his head and looks away. “I just thought…”

“Thought what.”

“You seemed happy, for once.” He scoffs, turning around. “Nevermind. Forget I said anything.”

She watches his retreating back, perplexed as to why her happiness is something for him to take an interest in.

\--

_They don’t speak for a week after the incident. In that time, she’s constructed an assassin._

_“Eager request: Master, I am restless. Please give me enemies to kill.”_

_She nods, distracted. Her mask is off, an increasing rarity. But she is aboard her own personal cruiser, with a crew comprised of members who have survived the war long enough to remember her features. There’s a spanner in her hair. “I need to recalibrate a few things.”_

_“Annoyed observation: Master, you have been recalibrating for hours now.”_

_The corner of her lip twitches._ Proud _isn’t the right word for the Hunter-Killer. But she is, for the first time in a long time, amused._

_After about a half hour of tinkering, she feels his presence. He has, once again, exposed his belly in approaching her first._

_“Completed?” Alek asks, voice nearly in her ear. He stands above where she leans over the workbench, close enough that their arms brush._

_“Warning: Master, this man is armed. Would you like me to terminate him on your behalf? According to my programming I have two settings for execution: slow and fast. I will act once a preference is decided.”_

_Alek tenses. It makes her grin as she shuts a panel on its torso._

_“Not yet, HK.”_

_“You’ve built a Hunter-Killer?” His voice is carefully neutral, but she senses his disapproval. She has yet to look at him-- her attention on HK’s unblinking optical lenses._

_“A different approach,” she says quietly._

_“Haughtily: Master, I do not approve of spectator evaluation.”_

_She sends Alek's profile a quick glance once she senses tension melt from his body. Like her, there is a faint look of amusement in his features._

_“Fine. Evaluate him in return," she compromises._

_“Observation: I find this creature to be a smelly meatbag.”_

_The laugh escapes her in a loud bark-- the first one since they left Dantooine. Alek watches her at the noise, trying and failing to look annoyed._

_“I imagine that’s going into the protocols,” he suggests without suggesting._

_“Of course,” she says, grabbing the hydrospanner and making the necessary adjustments._

_She feels his fingers thread through her fallen hair after a moment. She closes her eyes, and does her best to stop the noise it makes in her mind._ _  
_

\--

“Nonchalant observation: It seems my systems are restored to optimal levels.”

She looks up from the archived star map from Dantooine for the first time in a while. Across from her, HK-47 stands, plating catching the blue light from the projection before her.

“I made a few repairs,” she concedes.

“Query: This is for the diplomatic mission to the Sand People?”

She looks away, back to the map. Lets its glowing, yellow center burn through her.

“Additional query: Is the Master anticipating a need for assassin protocols when meeting with the Sand People?”

She presses her lips into a line.

“Gleefully: _Master_ you are much more fun than I anticipated!”

She closes her eyes, shoulders hunching forward as she braces her weight against the console.

\--

_They’re lying in bed together, Alek asleep. He doesn’t snore, and has long stopped clinging to her when he has dreams. Or nightmares._

_She's on her back, hands folded on her stomach as she gazes up at the ceiling._

_As her partner lies unmoving beside her, she mentally creates a list of targets._

_\--_

She takes Canderous and HK for what must be done with the Sand People. They return to Anchorhead, Gaffi sticks in hand. She is walking ahead of them, the latter pair in a discussion on their most impressive kill shots.

The Czerka office is just in view when they are attacked.

There are three Sith, in robes that speak to lesser rank. They stare directly at her as they engage their lightsabers-- shades of red and purple. Perhaps a deliberate mockery.

“Lord Malak has set an impressive bounty on your head!” Their leader cries. "We aim to collect!"

She sighs, bored.

\--

The battle is over quickly. HK stands over the smoking corpses, making another round of blaster bolts to their head to ensure “maximum deceasation.”

She, however, focuses on something other than the deaths of the dispatched Sith assassins. She pulls off their belts, uses her tools to quickly pry the casings apart--she ignores the cells, the stabilizers, the lenses. Her mind is focused on only a single element.

After a few minutes, two crystals rest in her palm: one red, one purple.

“Maybe you are learning,” she says to someone who can’t hear her.

Canderous watches her, hungry, as her hand forms a fist.


	5. Chapter 5

**Tatooine**

They are half a mile into the Dune Sea when they start arguing. It starts with what she has come to identify as Canderous’ teasing, although she also knows that’s not how others often perceive it.

“So, Bastila, I heard a rumor that the Vulkars captured you without much of a struggle. It must be embarrassing to be bested by a handful of street thugs.”

“There were extenuating circumstances-”

She sighs. What’s ahead of them is more important than any bickering between a Mandalorian mercenary and a green Jedi Knight, and she tells them as much. But they ignore her, and during the course of the argument, Canderous brings up an old name again.

“That’s the problem with you Jedi. Always chanting about peace and control, never up for a good fight. Well, except for Revan.”

She doesn’t like that he lets his statement hang in silence, that she acutely feels his stare in between her shoulders as she walks ahead of them. That Bastila ends their squabble with a short “ _Enough_!”

The winds of the desert pepper her face in little stings as sand flies against the exposed skin. The last time she was here, it wasn’t an exposure she had to worry about.

She clears her throat, winding a scarf tighter around the lower half of her face-- what the goggles don’t cover.

“The Star Map should be up ahead. Keep moving.”

\--

_She doesn’t make it to the refresher before her stomach upheaves. The door behind her slides closed, and she doubles over, staggering against the frame of her simple bed as she’s sick all over the floor. She smells it, and retches again, and she’s sliding down, hands shaking and fingers folded behind her head._

_The door slides open. She squeezes her eyes shut._

_“Go away, Alek.” But there’s no heat in the command. It’s not even a command, and she_ hates _the sound of weakness in her voice, the tremor going through her spine. It wasn’t supposed to be like this._ She _wasn’t supposed to be like this._

 _He, naturally, doesn’t listen to her. She hears his steps, sees his boots carefully avoid the mess she’s made on the floor. Unsurprisingly, he knows what to say to calm her. Others, she imagines, would offer condolences or a shoulder to cry on. But not Alek. He knows her too well for that,_ sees _her too well for that._

_So he doesn’t tell her it’s alright, she’s alright. Instead his voice is gentle when he speaks:_

_“No one noticed but me.”_

_She sags at that, resting her forehead on her bended knees. She disassociates for a moment, and when she comes back, Alek is crouched in front of her, the smell of sickness replaced by cleaner._

_“The first time is always hardest,” he offers._

_She gnashes her teeth. Wants to say something like it’s not her first time, or she’ll be able to do it again easier, but neither are true and she’s a liar but sometimes--sometimes--Alek can catch her in it._

_“I’m pathetic,” is what she whispers instead. It’s a concession only Alek is privileged to hear._

_His fingers slide under her chin, tilting her face up from where she had been hiding it. There’s a softness in his expression that makes her want to scream, to throw things off the walls and destroy._

_“Whatever you say next,” she growls, “_ Do not _patronize me.”_

_Alek shakes his head, sighing as he shifts his weight and sits next to her. He rests his elbows on his knees, mimicking her posture._

_“I wasn’t going to say anything.”_

_After their first battle in the Mandalorian Wars, after the first time she’s killed someone, they sit together on the floor of her small, insignificant quarters on the small, insignificant ship they’re stationed on. Alek eventually falls asleep, his cheek resting on the top of her head, but she only stares a hole into the floor-- hating herself for her current failing and replaying the memory of cutting down that teenage Mandalorian over and over again._

\--

Her new lightsaber makes a quick hum as it cuts down diagonally. The Sand Person gives a low, keening noise before they can’t make any noise at all, toppling over into the dirt.

“Is this what we are?” Bastila says in distaste, disengaging her own lightsaber as she looks around the bodies of fallen Sand People. “People who will commit murder for livestock?”

Canderous audibly snorts, sending her a look of exasperation before he begins to loot the bodies.

“It’s what I am,” she says simply.

Bastila sends her a thin-lipped look, her eyes quickly (but not quickly enough) glancing down at her new weapons.

She disengages the violet one first, then the red. It’s a taunt, she realizes, and it almost makes her smile. Part of her finds it... _fun,_ to see if Bastila will rise to the bait. To see if she makes enough clues for her to feel the need for intervention.

She leans against the flank of a Bantha, now ownerless. If she has to herd animals to get access to the cave, so be it. If she has to kill the owners for them, so be that, too. There is nothing more important than the Star Map. Nothing.

“There's nothing useful, other than fodder.” He tosses a bag up to her, and she catches it.

“It will work. Let’s go hunt a dragon.”

\--

_The Republic soldiers don’t know what to do with them, that much is clear. After a minor, successful ground battle, they all sit around a makeshift fire in the center of a makeshift camp. Those wearing red and gold on one side, those in robes on the other. The Jedi contingent for this excursion was small -- just her, Alek, and two, younger Knights named Ketel and Tali._

_Most of the soldiers are older, some wary. But there’s also young ones, and they’re the ones who make an effort to speak to the Jedi._

_“You’re really something in a fight,” one says to the right of her. She’s placed herself between them and the Jedi. Alek on one side, this young man on the other._

_She’s trying. War is different than missions, but she’s trying. To not retch. To not have her hands shake. To not wear her defeat on her expression. It’s not what she says, however. Because she has been observing these people, what they respect. How they interact with one another. The Jedi contingent cannot assimilate if they don’t learn how to be like the soldiers, first, and it’s up to her to make those important, first moves. Because she needs these men’s trust. She needs them to follow commands, once she’s established herself._

_So she smiles. It’s a nice smile, one without her usual bite. “It’s the lightsabers.”_

_She is not good at jokes. Or talking to people. Or, quite frankly, having to be_ likeable, _and so when the soldier gives a short laugh at that, she almost leans away._

_But she doesn’t. Instead she keeps smiling. She does her best to keep conversation going.  At one point, she even tolerates him slinging an arm over her shoulders. With this one soldier, she is successful. By the end of the night, when they retire, he even wishes her a stammered ‘goodnight’ with red-stained cheeks._

_“What are you doing?” Alek asks her, once she enters their shared tent. His back is to her, fingers deftly undoing the strings of his bedroll. Hers, she sees, is already laid out._

_Once the tent closes, she lets the facade drop. She sits on top of her bedroll, a frown on her features as she rests her chin on the heel of her hand._

_“If we want them to trust us, we can’t unknowable.”_

_He stops what he’s doing, looking at her over his shoulder. His expression is one of annoyance, which surprises her. “And how knowable do you plan to be?”_

_She tilts her head. “As much as necessary. Why?”_

_The annoyance shifts to anger, and she catches a low growl of “There are Oaths,” before Alek has turned away from her, rage in every line of his body._

_She is too tired to decipher whatever has upset him this time, and so she turns her back to him and sleeps._

_The next battle, the young soldier is killed and she steels herself for having to pretend once again._

\--

Canderous goes into the cave as soon as the beast drops to the ground, but she lingers beside the krayt dragon. She trails her fingers over its scales, feeling the smoothness of them that no doubt is a product of the desert’s wearing. Beyond is the Star Map, she knows this, but there’s something sad about this creature--something that resonates at seeing a strong warrior felled by trickery, denied the final battle it deserved.

“For your help, I’m happy to give you one piece of the dragon’s hoard!” The hunter says behind her.

“We’re taking it all,” she says, an edge in her tone. She stares directly into the unseeing eye of the dragon, feeling something close to pity. Kinship, maybe.

The hunter chuckles. “I’m afraid it was my traps that-”

She pivots, and a shade of her old self finds its way into her words. “We’re taking _all_ of it.”

Bastila sends her a wary and disapproving glance, but the hunter immediately runs back into the desert. Where he belongs, with all the other scavengers and carrion.

“That wasn’t necessary,” Bastila states quietly, as they walk into the cave.

She clenches her hands into fists. “He’s a coward.” She strides forward. “Cowards deserve no spoils.”

\--

 _She is appointed a command. A small one, but she knows it will grow. The soldiers stare at her, most of them, she knows, are volunteers who wanted to work with her._ For _her._

_She smiles that false smile. At her side, Alek’s face is carefully neutral._

_\--_

The Star Map flickers to life in front of her eyes. She closes her eyes, feeling relaxed-- feeling another part of her sliding back into place. Canderous stands close to her side, and she feels his gaze on her profile.

“You’re not really a Jedi, are you?” He asks, after a long stretch of time.

“No,” she says to the glowing coordinates in front of her. “I’m something else.”

Something more.

\--

_It’s a small victory, but one she knows they need to celebrate-- because it’s her first, as a commander. Their first, under her command. She assigns a skeleton crew to maintain operations, then allows the rest of the night off to those who fought with her planetside. Almost immediately, casks are open and the soldiers and engineers are sitting with each other-- some laughing, some dancing, some staring at each other and some sneaking off into empty corridors or quarters._

_She sits on a walkway further up, watching it happen underneath her dangling, booted feet. There’s a flask to her right--_ drinking _was never encouraged on Dantooine, but it certainly was in the Republic Fleet. Alek sits beside her, the two of them alternating pulls from the ale._

_“Not going to join your crew?” He asks, a slight edge to the question._

_“I did earlier.” A calculated, brief, appearance. Long enough to give them libations, to let them know she was_ proud.

_Another couple get up and leave the table. Alek takes a longer pull than normal before he speaks._

_“You should discourage fraternization on your ship.”_

_“Why?”_

_A heavy pause. When he doesn’t elaborate, she decides to look at him. His jaw is clenched, eyes burning holes into the crowd below them._

_She sighs. He always was better at following rules than she. “Relationships, connections...they’re not the distractions they might be during peacetime. Having someone to fight for, fight with-- that’s strategically important.”_

_He turns that burning stare on her. “So it’s just strategy to you.”_

_She takes the flask from him, her fingers sliding over his before she takes a deep drink. “Strategy is what wins wars.”_

_Alek frowns at her. “And when it’s our people, who decide to do this?”_

_She rolls her shoulders, shaking out tension from today’s fight. “Let them. We’ve already broken one oath.”_

_Then she stands, having had enough of this conversation, the people below them. Sleep is coming to her less and less ever since that first kill, and she wants to find it where she can. She tosses the rest of the ale to Alek before she walks toward her quarters._

_He watches after her, his frown deepening._

\--

Calo Nord is waiting for them outside the cave. She’s ready to just kill him and be done with it, but he looks straight at her when he speaks next.

“Malak’s got a price on your head.”

This is more decisive than those Sith assassins. Nord’s gaze doesn’t even move to Bastila, the main catalyst in these events unfolding around them. He’s here for her. Just her.

They still kill him, Canderous taking the final shot because it’s important to his foolish, Mandalorian pride. But when they return to the _Hawk,_ she walks straight toward her quarters and shuts her new companions out behind her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings** for this chapter:  
> -drinking before sex, sad(?) first-time sex (no explicit sexual content, however)  
> -more graphic descriptions of violence

**Kashyyyk**

She’s fallen asleep again. It’s a dream that she’s seen before, lived before. In it, the bottoms of her boots sink into the spongey ground of the forest. The Star Map unfolds, beckoning her closer. She has no choice but to follow, feeling the thrum of the Force in her pulse and exhales.

She reaches for it-  
-and wakes.

“Dozing, are you?” Comes a wizened voice not far from her.

She blinks, her surroundings coming to her slower than usual. Eventually, she processes the low ceilings, the smells of wet earth and some kind of broth. As she sits up, her eyes meet those of the man who had called himself Jolee Bindo.

The man with a lightsaber.

“Now she’s up,” he grumbles. He pours some of that soup into another clay bowl and offers it to her.

Numbly, she takes it. 

“Where are the others?” And her voice has a rasp to it that startles her somewhat. She has not sounded tired in years. 

“The pilot and the Mandalorian? Off doing what I asked them to, I expect. Czerka trash doesn’t get rid of itself.” He raises a snow-white brow. “Strange company you keep, Jedi.”

“Sola,” she corrects.

“If you say so.”

Her eyes flicker up. He’s staring at her. A moment passes.

Then he brings his bowl to his lips, drinks. She does the same.

The man from Kashyyyk makes her wary in a way none of the others do.

\--

_ Her first time is with a man she’ll never remember the name of. It had been a curiosity, a need to understand what it was that affected those under her command so much. Why it had been forbidden, whether it was something good enough to convince other Jedi that the Council was wrong in this, too. Wrong in everything. A way to understand an incentive that could be used to win a war that was looking more and more unwinnable.  _

_ A few months after the war begins, she waits for Alek to leave the forward camp they’ve been stationed at, because she’s not naive enough to pretend this decision of hers won’t upset him. If not because it broke her oath, then because she decided to break it with someone other than him. _

_ And she won’t break it with him. It’s what he wants, but more importantly, it’s what he fears. She won’t expose him to such things for something as trivial as this. Because after, if it isn’t what she wants, she thinks he will leave. _

_ She can’t let him leave. _

_ That night, she sits by the fire and drinks. Drinks some more. Waits until her limbs feel a little number, so her hands don’t shake. Until her skin doesn’t feel too small. She is able to be rational about it, to compartmentalize, by the time she finds someone who is attractive enough for her to tolerate. _

_ He’s part of the engineering corps, someone she never has cause to see again. From the paleness of his eyes, she suspects he might be part Arkanian. _

_ “Come with me,” she orders, when he’s alone enough for neither of them to be interrupted. _

_ He looks at her, confused. She averts her gaze, feeling angry and impatient (and foolish)(and scared). _

_ “I’m sorry?” _

_ She swallows and buries something of the girl from Dantooine away. The last of obedience, of listening and of calm. It won’t be recovered. _

_ “I need you to show me how this works.” _

_ The Arkanian frowns at her, but then he sees the lightsaber on her belt and it all falls into place. She is not the first, after all, to be an oathbreaker. _

_ Eventually, he takes her back to a tent. It ends, and she leaves without a word to her own bedroll. _

_ The next morning, in the early hours of dawn, Alek comes back from his scouting assignment. He doesn’t know she’s awake, doesn’t know that she feels it when he runs his thumb slowly over her cheek. His touch leaves her skin, there’s the sound of a blanket being lifted, and soon there’s the warmth of his back pressed against hers. _

_ She doesn’t sleep. Sex, she understands with sharper clarity now, is not the same as love. Not anywhere near as dangerous or frightening. _

_ (he wouldn’t have left, she realizes too late) _

\--

“You should’ve just let the thing die,” Canderous remarks.

“Maybe she doesn’t want your solution for everything,” Carth snipes back. “Or is this different because there’s no credits involved?”

“Maybe it is-”

She walks ahead of the bickering pair, eyes scanning the dense, dark forests of the Shadowlands for a hint of the Mandalorians they’re supposedly hunting. 

Truth be told, she doesn’t know why she stopped for the fallen wookiee on the forest floor. Or spent the precious little time they had healing him. The Force technique had been unnatural, a light side technique she has not used since the war. But slowly, Grrrwahrr’s wounds had closed. 

Jolee gave a small hmph, but she felt his eyes on her. It made her shoulders tense.

According to the ambushed wookiee, there were Mandalorians out in the forest, ones that would only approach if their prey was unarmed. 

“Cowards,” Canderous spat. And that had been enough.

She ignores both men as they continue to fight, and Jolee steps next to her. 

“Nice night for a walk, at least.”

“How can you tell the difference?”

“Oh, look, she’s funny too.”

The comment has her raising her eyebrows. Very,  _ very  _ few people had accused her of being  _ funny.  _ Few that were still alive, anyways.

“Up ahead,” Jolee instructs, nodding to a clearing. “That’s the navpoint. How do you want to play this?”

“Stay behind me,” she instructs. And, for some reason she doesn’t understand, tosses him her two hard-fought lightsabers. 

“Interesting strategy. Thought you’d be better at that part, at least.”

Her gaze snaps to him. “Why.”

There’s the barest pull at the corner of his mouth. “Call it a hunch.”

She doesn’t know what to make of this man. The one that she knows  _ knows.  _ Briefly, she thinks of killing him. But something won’t let her. She tells herself it’s because he’s kept her secret so far, that she needs him for the next star map.

Maybe these things are true.

She stalks ahead, walking straight into the clearing where she knows the Mandalorians lie in wait.

As soon as she is alone, clearly unarmed, they flicker into being.

She is surrounded.

\--

_ Dirt sprays over her as what she thinks is a permacrete detonator goes off. The force of the explosion knocks her off her feet, sends her flying across the battleground. She’s only stopped by another body, and they crash into each other with sharp limbs and startled cries as they fall to the ground. It only takes seconds for them to realize they are not on the same side, for the Mandalorian to scramble for his vibroblade and for her to extend her hand in a Force shove- _

_ The blade is quicker. It digs into her stomach, twists. _

_ She screams. _

_ Another charge goes off, ringing in her ears. The Mandalorian slides the blade out. It is the worst pain she has ever felt in her life. _

_ Her vision becomes flooded with black, flickering in and out. She feels her head loll back. The Mandalorian manages to stand, gripping the blade to move in a downward slash- _

_ No. She thinks. This is not how it happens. She won’t allow it. The universe is hers to command, and she will  _ not  _ allow  _ this-

_ She coughs. It’s warm and dribbles down her chin. _

_ The blade descends, and embeds itself once again in her gut. _

_ \-- _

She shakes the blood off her fist. 

Below her the Mandalorian lies unmoving. She vaguely processes the sounds of Carth’s pistol and Canderous’s heavy blaster sounding off, finding soft targets made of flesh and bone and sinew. But it’s the one she’s crouching over, the leader, who is so obviously dead. 

She hadn’t bothered using a weapon. When she turns around, Jolee wordlessly hands the pair of lightsabers to her. 

Her fingers make bloody trails around the silver handles. 

“Where,” she says, feeling detached, feeling tired. The Mandalorian’s foot behind her gives a slight, small twitch. “Is the Star Map?”

Jolee closes his eyes. His shoulders slump. He ages years in the span of a second.

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

\--

_ She can’t move, and the thought that she is lying atop a pyre, dead and about to be burned away, does not leave her. In this moment she does not think about the Masters, Alek, or even herself. All she feels is a primal, guttural protest in the heart of her- _

_ Not  _ yet _! It screams. Not  _ now! 

_ And the refusal tears through the Force, echoes within it. She feels air flood her lungs, her stomach muscles clench and then seize. Pain floods every cell of her body. _

_ But her body is alive. It’s  _ alive,  _ and it can still do what needs to be done because of it.  _

_ (later, they tell her she was under sedation. That she couldn’t move because she was undergoing extensive bacta treatments to keep her body together. But she knows _ ,  _ she  _ knows  _ that she has defied something. She knows she can defy it again) _

\--

The hologram of the Rakata that guards access to the star map brings back memories. It asks her questions that she answers seamlessly-- ruthless ones, responses that favor victory over protection. Carth’s disapproval radiates off him like an aura as she passes the trial set before her.

“You can’t possibly mean any of that,” he states, as they walk through the forest. Jolee and Canderous falling behind as they take point.

“Does it matter one way or the other?” She looks where she knows the map’s base is located in the distance.

“Of course it does,” Carth protests. “That’s not who you are.”

She doesn’t answer, fist clenching at her side. He takes that as invitation to continue.

“You healed that wookiee when you didn’t have to. You saved Juhani. You didn’t have to do that, either. You’ve helped the wookiees, removed Czerka and Mandalorian forces. Freed Zalbaar and his clan from slavers. You can pretend otherwise, but I’ve seen it.” He steps in front of her, hands resting on her biceps. 

She allows his touch, his words momentarily giving her pause. He must see the bemusement on her face, because his softens.

“Sola…”

Abruptly, she pushes him away. Without stopping, she moves to the side and walks in a determined line toward the map. 

“Keep your observations to yourself,” she says--without passion, without feeling.

-

When the star map opens, she closes her eyes, and lets its light wash over her. Lets it wash everything else out of focus. Back into the dark, where it belongs.

\--

_ It isn’t until a month after her near-death that Alek is able to find her again. At the time of the battle, he had been running airstrikes. As soon as she had recovered, she made sure to pick up an assignment. There was too much to do, too much left for her to accomplish. There was no time to  _ stop moving.

_ So when they are finally able to cross paths again, on some smelly swamp moon she doesn’t even remember the name of, she forgets that he doesn’t know the truths she’s locked away: that she’s broken her oath, that she’s died.  _

_ It makes what he does next even more unexpected. _

_ There is only the smallest of warnings across her senses before she feels him in quick, decisive moves. A hand on the back of her head, tilting it back. The other on the seam of her spine. Fingers winding into her hair. Pulling on it. His body, craning over so he can reach. _

_ Then his mouth, colliding into hers. Violent. Her breath hitches into his. His entire body seems to shudder, as though letting go of a noiseless sob. The kiss lasts only for a second more, then his arms are wrapped around her, pressing her so close to him that she knows he is trying not to lose her.  _

_ His face buries itself in the space between her neck and shoulder. And when the strength goes out from him, when his body goes limp, he is too tall and too heavy for her to support. They land in a heap on the ground. His breath coming in short and panicked. Her eyes pressed shut as though in pain. _

_ She doesn’t know the truths he’s locked away, either. _

_ \-- _

Back on the Ebon Hawk, her eyes trail over the medbay Jolee has taken upon himself to refurbish. She doesn’t take in the man just yet, only mentally accounting for the changes he’s already made between now and when they departed from Kashyyyk a few hours ago.

“Got something on your mind, young lady?” 

He doesn’t turn around from the medpacks he’s slowly organizing. She had paid for them with the dead Mandalorians’ money.

It’s late. She doesn’t know why she’s here. She leans against the frame of the door, arms crossing over her stomach.

“Ah,” Jolee continues, stopping his task and turning around. He eyes her posture with amusement, before mimicking it. “You want to know what’s on my mind, instead. Is that it?”

She watches him, impassive as possible.

“What’s on  _ my  _ mind,” Jolee continues, “Probably makes no difference to you. Just an old coot and all that.”

“Tell me,” she says, voice a whisper. She knows what he’s about to say. Doesn’t know why she has tears in her eyes at the thought that someone,  _ someone  _ knows her.

Jolee steps forward. His thumb, calloused and scratchy, runs under one of her eyes. Then the next.

“What I'm thinking,” he says softly, “Is that maybe you need someone to talk to.”

“Sola’s not my name,” she whispers.

“I know, kid. It’s not mine either.”

Her next exhale escapes at his words-- a laugh half-formed on her tongue.

“See?” he says, patting her shoulder before walking past, back into the main hub of the ship. “You’re not all that bad, are you?”

She stares at the empty space he leaves behind. Eventually, she finishes the task he started, her hands sliding medpacks into the supply drawers.

At the moment, she doesn’t know what else to do.


	7. Chapter 7

**The** **_Ebon Hawk_ **

“You’ve set our next course for Manaan?” 

She doesn’t look up from the work table. Beside her, Zaalbar gives half-hearted instructions on how to mold grenades from spare parts. She’s never had a deft hand at demolitions, and so she’s taken the time between ports as an opportunity to get better at them. He had offered, after she had killed his brother. There were less beneficial trades in killing. 

“Where would you have suggested?” She mutters, not really caring as her hands attempt to use a small plasma torch between two components.

Zaalbar lets out a long groan.  _ You’ll blow up the ship.  _

She glares at him. “This is exactly what you did.”

_ It is not. _

“It  _ is _ -”

“Korriban, perhaps,” Bastila cuts in, striding forward and tilting her head. “It is the most...hostile destination, and we, for once, are well-supplied.”

Korriban. She gives nothing away in her expression, but there is the slightest twitch to her thumb.

_ Not again,  _ Zaalbar protests, his big, hairy paws come to rest over her hands, then not-so-subtly pry the tools away from them.  _ We’re done for today. _

“We’re done when I saw we’re done-”

He releases a loud, vocal yell that has her hair flying back. 

She frowns. 

His eyebrows raise.

She sighs, digging the heels of her hands into her tired, strained eyes.

_ Good. I’m going to the mess. Don’t touch anything. _

“Wookiees,” she grumbles, and her annoyance spikes when Bastila apparently finds that invitation to sit next to her.

“I understand that you’ve taken Jolee’s counsel on several matters,” Bastila states, a small frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.

She is tired. And more tired of games. Her hands drop to the table, and the look she gives the younger woman is cool, assessing.

“Instead of yours?”

Bastila flushes. “That is  _ not  _ what I meant-”

“Say what you came to say.”

She inhales through her teeth. “Korriban is closer on our current route than Manaan. The rerouting  _ wastes  _ at least two standard weeks in flight time.” Bastila’s brows draw down. “So are we going to Manaan because Jolee has requested it, or-”

“Or what.”

“-are you simply avoiding Korriban?”

She does not like the feeling that floods her. Instantly, she feels her jaw clenching, her nostrils failing. Her entire body goes tense. She is  _ angry,  _ but more importantly, she let herself  _ show  _ anger in front of this neophyte.

“We are going to Manaan,” she says carefully, “Because that is where I said we’re going.”

Bastila’s chin juts out, just a little. “It is time we discussed-”

“I am  _ done  _ talking.”

And she is. She is also done looking at the thief, at the one who has somehow burrowed under her skin like some unwanted splinter.

Because she  _ remembers.  _ The feel of Bastila’s fingers pressed against her temples. The pulling into the fog. The way her powers  _ took  _ from hers like a siphon, until she was so weak she could barely levitate a pazaak card off the ground in Taris.

This woman wanted to bring her to heel. Like she was some kath hound. Like she wasn’t-

“Don’t follow me.”

She stands, walking away from the work table and into the engine room, where the noise is at least one she can tolerate.

\--

_ They are several months into the war by the time she actually has a conversation with Meetra Surik. She is among the youngest of the Jedi defectors, and her smiles come too easy for someone that chose war over peace.  _

_ “You look hungry.” _

_ She hadn’t realized it, but she is. Her stomach gives an almost painful lurch.  _

_ Meetra pats the spot beside her. “We’ve got space.” _

_ It’s then she realizes that she has intruded on something in approaching her. Around the table in the mess, Meetra has amassed a following--their attention focused on their conversation. There is an Iridonian seated to the left of her that has not stopped staring at Meetra’s profile.  _

_ Slowly, she begins to understand why Arren Kae told her to bring this girl barely out of padawan robes. She was like Alek in the easy bonds she forged. She knows at this point she is staring too long, but she’s unable to stop her scrutiny. There is something... _ wrong,  _ about Meetra. Behind her bright eyes and easy smiles there is an ache. There is something that  _ eats _. _

_ A cold sweat forms on the back of her neck. _

_ Meetra says her name, head tilting to the side. “Are you going to sit?” _

_ She does not want to. There is something about this girl--a mediocre Jedi with no clear talent in either the Force or war--that sends something dark down her spine. _

_ Fear, she realizes. She is afraid. _

_ But she does not bow to fear. And so she takes the seat. She watches, fascinated, as Meetra speaks and the table quiets down to listen. That when she laughs, the table laughs along. She even finds herself smiling, an awkward but sincere expression. _

_ “I think it’s important, what you’re doing,” Meetra tells her sincerely, after their tablemates begin excusing themselves. Soon, only they and the Iridonian remain.  _

_ From her, she believes it. The smile has faded from her face, but something in her chest settles for the first time at Meetra’s calm reassurance. She feels an uncoiling of tension that she didn’t know existed in her jaw, her shoulders, her neck. _

_ “Thank you,” she says, surprised that she means it. _

_ Meetra smiles. _

_ After their second, third, fourth, and fifth conversation, she adds a name under Alek’s. The names of those she won’t allow to come to harm. _

_ Meetra Surik has become her second friend.  
_ _ Their friendship ends as all her friendships do. _

_ \-- _

“Getting under your skin, is she?” 

She glares at the old man’s intrusion. Whatever is in her expression stalls him for a moment, that brief pause that gives him away as  _ knowing,  _ but then he smirks and raises his hands in mock defense.

“What? You going to try and boss me around, too?”

“Leave,” she bites out.

“It’s  _ my  _ med room,” he counters, taking a seat before the bed she’s currently laying obn. “Let me guess, wanting a physical?”

“Wanting silence.”

“Wrong ship for that.”

“So I’m realizing.” She crosses her arms behind her head. Scowls at the ceiling. 

They sit in silence, until Jolee breaks it with a question she does not want to hear.

“So what happened on Korriban?”

She frowns. “Nothing.”

“So we’re going off schedule to get my old war buddy out of prison?” Jolee lets out a low whistle. “I’m flattered, but I also look for gizka shit before I step in it.”

Her jaw clenches. 

“Hmph,” Jolee says after she isn’t forthcoming. “Read you loud and clear. Sensitive subject.”

Sensitive. 

She almost laughs. Would, if her jaw didn’t ache.

\--

_ “She’s not ready to be a general,” Alek says coldly.  _

_ She immediately knows who he’s talking about. “Aren’t you friends?” _

_ “You know that doesn’t matter here.” _

_ She turns her attention away from the lightsaber components that are hovering in mid-air. Alek sits at a low table across the cargo hold, angrily skimming through some datalogs.  _

_ It’s been a week since he kissed her. And, typical for the both of them, she wants time to make it clinical and he wants more as soon as possible. The result has been a week of tension, of thinly veiled patience, and a few hits that are too hard in practice spars. _

_ “She isn’t ready,” she agrees, stare going distant. “ _ Yet.  _ But this is going to be a long war, and if we want to make it through, we need to start training  _ officers. _ ” _

_ “The Republic has officers.” _

_ “That’s not enough.” _

_ “She’s been fucking the Iridonian for months,” he suddenly snarls, giving up all pretense of reading to glare at her. “Not even trying to hide it.” _

_ She refocuses on him, watching carefully. “So.” _

_ “So,” he scoffs.  _

_ His hands clenched tightly on the table, his anger palpable. But then he says her name in a frustrated whisper, and the anger seems to deflate and leave him. Instead, he merely looks tired. _

_ “You will need to decide, soon,” he says as he closes his eyes, “What we are.” _

_ “What do you mean?” _

_ “Are we Jedi? Are we Republic? Because one foot in each world will kill us eventually.” _

_ “What makes this my decision?” _

_ And there’s that scoff again, undeniably bitter. _

_ “Aren’t they  _ all  _ yours?” _

\--

“Got something on your mind?”

She frowns into her mug of caf. The old coot is right, this is the wrong ship for solace. 

It’s late into the night cycle aboard the  _ Hawk,  _ and, unable and unwanting to sleep, she had found her way to the mess. The ship was still and quiet, aside from some noises from the garage area that she had come to associate with Canderous attempting to fight away whatever it was that came in his dreams.

Carth walks in, sitting across from her uninvited. She doesn’t  _ like  _ Carth. Doesn’t like the way he keeps waiting for her to ask him questions, the way he keeps demanding answers from her. Most importantly, she does not like the way he stares. It is not the same way Canderous does. It’s expectant.

He’s staring at her that way now.

“We haven’t talked much since Kashyyyk,” he starts. 

She did not desire to rectify it. So she sips from her caf, eyes meeting his in what she hopes is a hostile expression.

“Don’t give me that look,” he runs his hand through his constantly disheveled hair, “I’m trying to apologize.”

She arches a brow, waiting for him to continue.

“You’re the most-” he sighs away his frustration, starts again. “What I said to you outside the star map...I overstepped.” He glares down at the table. “We had something that needed to be done, and you did it. Like you always do.”

“I did.”

He looks up, frowning. “It’s that easy for you, too, isn’t it? Every time?”

The memories flash in her mind in bits and pieces. Malachor. Serraco. Dxun. Korriban.

“Not every time.”

“Well, you’d never know it.” He leans back, folding his hands over his stomach. He stares at her, and she sees the thoughts cross his mind even though he doesn’t speak them.

“...what is it you want to say?”

“You’ve changed, since Taris.”

Her fingers flex against the mug. 

“I think the sad thing is, you don’t even recognize it.” 

Her head snaps up, but Carth is clearly done speaking. He pushes back his chair, walks over to her.

“Here, let me get that,” he whispers, taking the mug out of her hands. 

His fingers are warm and heavy and immediately she lets her grip drop. For the briefest of moments, she feels almost paralyzed.

But then Carth starts the cycler, and she feels that familiar, cold anger take its hold on her.

“You’re wasting your time,” she says flatly, staring at the wall ahead of her.

“With what?”

She presses her fingertips down on the table. As always, she knows exactly what to say to get the end result she wants.

“I’m not the ghost you’re chasing.”

Carth’s anger is usually quick to ignite and quick to cool. This time it’s a silent, cold thing. It hovers in the room until it starts to smother her, and then she hears his boots on the floor and the sound of a door sliding shut.

As soon as she knows he’s gone, her shoulders slump and she buries her hands into her hair.

\--

_ She watches them. _

_ They are not as obvious as Alek claims they are, the nature of their relationship only clear to her because it had been pointed out. The Iridonian sometimes rests his hand between her shoulder blades or on her lower back or on the top of her thigh. Her smile is softer when she directs it at him. They make it a point to leave every room, every gathering, at different times. _

_ Eventually, her curiosity wins out. It always does. _

_ “You’re close to the tech,” she begins in a mild, flat voice as the pair of them work to inventory supplies for their shared battlecruiser. _

_ Meetra’s ears go slightly pink, but she does not shy away from the question, or feign ignorance. She is reminded why she likes her. “Bao-Dur.” _

_ She suspects she’ll forget the name as soon as she leaves. “Do you love him?” _

_ “...yes.” _

_ She frowns. “Can you still be considered a Jedi, then?” _

_ Meetra sits with the question, before she turns and tilts her head. Not for the first time, she’s acutely aware of their places in the Force, how they push and they pull. _

_ “Can  _ you _?” _

_ Because this is Meetra, the only one she trusts aside from Alek, she answers truthfully. “I was never a Jedi.” _

_ The woman who will only be known as The Exile nods, her expression sad.  _

_ “I fear that is the case for many of us.” _

_ \-- _

“Can I speak with you?”

She slowly looks away from her datapad, unsurprised to see Bastila outside her quarters. But she  _ is  _ surprised to see that the younger woman looks unnerved, haughtiness gone.

Slowly, she sits up on her bed, makes room for Bastila to sit. She does not know why she does this-

_ You’ve changed, since Taris _

-and her next words are harshly spoken. “What do you want?”

Bastila sends her a slow, sidelong look. “I...I have been uncharitable to you. I see this now.”

She takes this in without reaction.

“I,” she sighs. “I have been told by Council, nearly all my life, that my Battle Meditation would be what ended the war. That one day I would have to face Revan and Malak myself.”

“Hm,” she offers. 

Bastila begins to toy with the fabric at the ends of her sleeve. “It is harder than I imagined, to try and be your guide. In ways you cannot understand, I feel responsible for you. For how this ends.” 

Bastila presses her lips into a thin line. “I sense we will not be able to hide from Malak for much longer. As such, my thoughts have been troubled as of late. Because it is  _ I  _ who must face him. Only I stand a chance at defeating him, once and for all.”

“Why,” she says carefully. Always so carefully. “Do you believe that?”

The look Bastila sends her is somehow both pitying and condescending. “It is as the Force wills it to be.”

She almost laughs. Because  _ she  _ is the Force. And this is not how she would will it.

“I sense him following us,” Bastila says, moving to leave. “It will be soon."

When she is alone once more, she lies back in bed. 

“Good,” she whispers.

\--

_ It is late when he returns to their quarters. She has not slept. Instead, she sits in the middle of the room, her legs crossed. Her eyes staring at nothing. _

_ Alek frowns, dropping to his knees before her. “What are you doing?” _

_ “She loves him,” is all she says.  _

_ He scowls, clearly overtired. Clearly unwilling to parse through any cryptic statements she might offer. “I’m going to bed-” _

_ “Don’t you want to hear my decision?” She asks quickly, before he can leave. _

_ He moves slightly away from her, but she grabs his forearm. Anchors him to her. _

_ “I,” she whispers, “am not a Jedi.” _

_ He freezes, and then it’s almost violent, how fast he shakes her touch. “It’s late. You don’t know what you’re saying.”  _

_ “When has that ever been true.” _

_ She watches his face then, sees the expressions he can’t control cross it. Fear. Want. Panic. Longing. It goes back and forth in him and in each other and he has always been her grounding but she can’t use him in that way if he does not settle. If he does not  _ decide.

_ “I,” she says again, slower this time, as her hands go to the ties of his robes. “Am not a Jedi.” _

_ His hands are shaking when they cover hers. She lets him hold her for a moment. Because it’s what he needs. Then she slides his outer robe off with deft fingers, begins to work on the inner one, and his hands move uselessly to his sides. _

_ He says her name, and she does not know what he is begging her for.  _

_ When she pulls off his under-tunic, she lets the flats of her palms rest against his bare chest. She likes the way her skin contrasts with the blue, tattooed stripes. She likes that she can feel his heart pounding. She leaves her touch there, for a moment, before she begins to undo her own robes. _

_ He grabs her wrists with one of his hands, and she can both sense and feel the storm he’s barely contained within him. _

_ “Is this not what you want?” She asks, confusion clear. _

_ “I…” he swallows hard. And his face pulls into a sneer, his eyes go hard and bitter. “I want you to love me.” _

_ “And you believe I don’t,” she concludes. _

_ His grip on her wrist tightens. _

_ She knows that she only needs to tell him. That he would believe anything she said, because it’s what he wants to hear the most. But the words won’t leave her tongue--because part of her is furious at his doubt. Part of her wonders if it’s warranted. _

_ “If I can love anyone,” she settles on, “It would be you.” _

_ His hold on her goes slack. _

_ “So let me try,” she whispers. _

_ His hands drop. Hers do too. They sit there, breathing. Then she feels his hands on her shoulders, feels the warmth of his fingers replace the fabric of her robes. Then his mouth.  _

_ He brings them to the floor, and she brings them together. _


	8. Chapter 8

**Manaan.**

She doesn’t bother to ask Carth or Bastila to accompany her to Ahto City. Both have hardly left their quarters, and she has no desire to see either. Ahto City has a strict rule for no combat, and part of her finds humor in the companions she chose.

“Disappointed observation: Master, the Sith Base wasn’t nearly as dangerous as promised.”

Her hands find the pockets of her robes. She had taken a set of black ones from the would-be assassins on Kashyyyk, something that made half the ship distinctly uncomfortable. The other half…

“The sooner we get off this fish market the better,” Canderous grunts. They are not allowed to use weapons, but it hasn’t stopped either of her companions from carrying rather large blasters in plain sight. “Smell’s making me sick.”

“You’re not about to like where we’re going next, then,” she says as they walk further along the white walls and floors of the city.

“Concerned statement: Master, you are going the wrong way.”

“Am I?”

“Tentative observation: This takes us to the Republic Embassy.”

“It does.”

“Patient reminder: Master, we have already tortured someone here. It is unlikely the Republic will let us torture another.”

She thinks of the man in the cell, how easy it had been to bend his mind into giving them the passcode to the Sith base. Her powers, however slowly, are undeniably returning. It feels right, like a disruptive burst of static finally flattening.

She senses when it snaps in Canderous’s head. “Let me guess, you’re putting us underwater?”

She doesn’t smile, but there’s something amused about the way she presses the opening of the pressurized door.

Canderous snorts to her side, somewhere been annoyed and amused, as the door slides up.

\--

 _His hand is warm as it rests between her bare shoulders, fingers giving an experimental flex. She doesn’t move, laying on her side and staring a hole through the wall she faces. Tomorrow, it begins. Already, she’s done the mental math of it-- knows how many they are about to lose. The Mandalorians are too well entrenched, the Republic untrained in guerilla warfare and not as familiar with the land as they are. But they’ve got the numbers. It’s going to be_ numbers, _that defeat the Mandalorians. They are too prideful, too assumptive that every battle will be glorious and will give their combatants the great honor they seek._

_She knows better. Battles are not for glory, they’re for gaining a foot of ground. Sometimes that means bloodying it, first._

_She tucks her knees in to her stomach. One of her hands is resting palm-up near her face. Soon, his hand moves from her shoulders to cover it. He laces his fingers with hers, and she tries to maintain control over her breathing._

_“You can be afraid,” Alek says quietly. “I am.”_

_She closes her eyes._ I am not afraid! _rolls in her mind as a protest, but it’s a lie and worse, they would both know it’s a lie._

_He pulls her back against his chest, the hand not holding hers wrapping around her stomach in a comforting weight. His nose brushes aside her hair in order to kiss the back of her neck._

_The numbers race in her mind. The assault will take months, perhaps even a year. It’s the stronghold of the Mandalorians, a piece of the dejarik board that must be removed if this war is going to end. And right now, they have the power. And, after liberating Taris, she now has carte blanche in directing Republic forces._

_Meetra has volunteered to lead one of the small-unit groundteams aimed at pathfinding and reconnaissance. A suicide mission._

_Her back lifts with a ragged inhale._

_“I love you,” Alek murmurs into her skin._

_She slams her eyes shut, but the tears still well in them._

_Tomorrow, they take Dxun._

_\--_

The first time she had visited the ocean floor of Manaan, it had been much the same: she had been alone, in the slowest-moving pressure suit known to the galaxy. Malak--Alek, then--had stayed behind to monitor firaxa movement, to give directions in her ear.

For the first time in awhile, she is alone. Her feet stop for a moment on the grated flooring, and she sees the closed star map in the distance. There isn’t an immediate need to grab it, and so she just stays standing for a moment.

She tilts her head back as far as it can go, staring into the blue waters that are so deep she can’t see the surface.

Eventually, she’ll move forward. Take the star map. Be one step closer to the forge and hunting down Malak once and for all.

But for now, she stands in utter solitude, and listens to her breathing.

\--

_“We’ll position droid flight carriers along the following points,” she instructs, gesturing to the war table. A few lights flicker on, representing the aforementioned carriers in a flanking position. “From there, we’ll release ground forces to dismantle the anti-air turrets we have intelligence on.”  Smaller lights flicker on, showing a parameter. “Once clear, we’ll send the second wave.”_

_“And this first wave, they’ll be droids?”_

_She looks up, dark circles under her eyes. Her hair is greasy and unkempt, shoved into a bun. Today, she hasn’t even bothered to put her mask on. “Yes.”_

_Rear Admiral Saul Karath frowns from his place across from her, his hands folded behind his back. “Living ground forces could provide better reconnaissance. A pathfinder unit, perhaps.”_

_She does not like this man. Does not like self-assured smile he always sends her, or the way he tries to undermine her in situations such as these. The man has loyalty from the Republic forces, and therefore she needs him, but they’re both acutely aware that he needs_ her _more._

_“Droids for the first assault,” she says with a bite, glaring directly at him in hopes he’ll challenge her one more time._

_He doesn’t. “Understood, Commander.”_

_“Good,” the word is clipped. “The second wave will be mostly Republic soldiers, with one of my generals in command.”_

_To her side, Meetra nods. She is calm, expectant, as she stands to her right in her orange and red Republic robes. The uniform had become standard a few months ago, for the Jedi who were not Jedi._

_“That’s a suicide mission,” Karath mutters._

_She glares right at him, about to put this upstart in his place once and for all-_

_“All forward troops are volunteers,” Meetra interrupts quietly._

_“And who would volunteer for something like_ this _?” Karath sneers._

_Meetra meets his gaze, her words cool. “Those who wished to fight under my command.”_

_Push, and pull. She looks at her friend and feels her anger start to abate. Meetra tilts her head._

_“As you were saying, Commander?”_

_She takes a deep breath, clearing her head. Then she tells them the rest of her brilliant strategy, that is sure to get at least half the people in this room killed._

\--

They are returning to the submersible when she feels something snag on her senses. She pauses, mid-step, and it catches Canderous’s attention.

“What?” He demands.

She stares ahead, watching the closed door with wary acceptance. “You might want to take a stim.”

“Jubilant exclamation: Is it time for slaughter, Master?”

She pulls out her lightsabers. “Yes.”

She nods at Canderous, who plunges something into his thigh and then rolls his shoulders, hefting the repeating blaster up.

Her lightsabers ignite, purple and red, and she opens the door with the Force.

On the other side stands Bandon, a useless upstart Malak had started training shortly before her capture. A Dark Jedi flank either side of him, their lightsabers drawn.

Bandon walks toward her, his double-bladed lightsaber punching to life. “You may have defeated the pathetic bounty hunter my Master sent after you, but you are no match for me!”

“Which bounty hunter?” Canderous asks with a snort.

Bandon frowns.

“Calo Nord,” she supplies without any emotion. Instead, she watches the apprentice. If Malak is sending someone she actually _knew_ about, it must mean something has changed. “Why are you here?”

“To kill you.”

“That’s it?”

Bandon’s eyebrows draw together.

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.” With an easy flick of the wrist, her blades draw up across her chest. “I think you know how this is going to go.”

And there must be something in her posture, or her face or words, because suddenly his face goes pale. “You-”

She doesn’t give him a chance to finish. All she does is shut off one of her blades. Then, like an atrophied muscle, she calls Force Lightning to her palm.

It ends quickly, after that.

\--

_“You need to sleep.”_

_She doesn’t turn around, her hands braced on the war table and holding her weight. Below her, she sees the flickers of light that indicate the ground battle. Sees row after row of orange lights go out. Were her math correct, she would place casualties at about 10 Republic soldiers to 1 Mandalorian._

_He sighs, and begins to say her name-_

_“What is it, Alek?”_

_He steps in place to her side. “_ They _need you to sleep,” he tries again, employing a different tactic._

_“You just want something in your bed,” she snaps, eyes narrowed as she moves a feint unit to a different block of coordinates. As soon as it’s placed on the war table, a transmission will be sent to whoever the forward commander was now._

_She lost contact with Meetra a week ago._

_Alek’s head snaps to her profile, and she can feel the anger rolling off of him. His patience is wearing thin, these days. More so with her. But she can’t care. Another orange dot flickers out._

_“Fine,” he bites out, “Let this kill you.”_

_As always, she can’t say sorry._ _  
_ _As always, he walks away._

_\--_

_She doesn’t sleep for another 20 standard hours, injecting stims into her thigh when she feels fatigue truly taking over. She has never been more thankful for Vandar’s training in meditation, in stasis. Ten minutes of it, and she is rested enough to think clearly. To order missives._

_She cannot let her commanding officers see her state, and so she wears the mask. It hides her anger, her exhaustion. It covers the dark and bloodshot eyes and the permanent frown on her features._

_Three months into the siege of Dxun, there is a patch through the comms._ Her _comm._

_She reads it immediately, and sees shorthand:_

_X3RHM02. 4R4. NIMAN._

_The comm shakes in her grasp. The first set are coordinates, the second the state of the unit. The last, a call sign:_

_2 clicks outside the fortress. Pinned, need support. Meetra Surik._

_She takes a deep breath, sets the comm down._

_“Get me ten soldiers, five Jedi,” she instructs. “Prepare them for ground deployment.”_

_The petty officer to the right station nods. “Of course, Commander. Who would you like to assign as unit leader?”_

_Her eyes burn. “Me.”_

_\--_

They’re leaving the trial room, for about the fourth time since landing on this forsaken planet, when Canderous falls into step with her.

“Pretty sure Jedi don’t do what you just did.”

“And what was that?”

“You don’t have to bullshit me,” Canderous says, and there’s something in his voice she doesn’t like. Something she’s heard before, from others. “Not like you do with the others.”

“And how’s that?”

He gives a short “hmph,” but doesn’t elaborate. After a moment, he clears his throat. “Send your tin can back home.”

“Why.”

“Because I want a drink.”

“Then go get one.”

He smirks, sending her a sidelong look. “I want you to get one, too.”

She frowns. But after a moment, she nods.

“HK?”

“Statement: Yes, Master?”

“Head back to the ship.”

“Petulant acquiescence: If I must.”

The droid veers off toward the docking bay. And she turns to Canderous, one brow arched.

“C’mon then. There’s only one cantina in this place.”

She follows.

\--

_The Mandalorians are gone by the time she gets there. The fortress, for all extents and purposes, has been abandoned. Only a skeleton crew of Mandalorians to hold the turrets._

_“What should we do with the prisoners, Commander?”_

_She can’t think straight. “They’re the Republic’s. Deal with them how you want.”_

_The soldier looks at her with confusion, before he wisely hides it and nods. “Of course, Commander.”_

_Meetra is injured, her body slathered in bacta patches as she limps toward her. “I guess we won,” she says, and while it’s not bitter it is_ tired _in a way she has not heard her speak before._

_She looks around the battlefield. Cutting a path through Dxun’s jungles, she had seen countless of downed Republic ships, ruined droids. Corpses wearing both Republic uniforms and Jedi robes._

_“Your ground unit?”_

_Meetra’s face is solemn, words flat. “Dead. They charged a minefield to advance on the fortress.”_

_She nods, not sure what else to do. No one had pretended this battle wasn’t going to be anything but a bloodbath. “This is your victory, then.”_

_Meetra swallows. Sways. She ducks under her arm to support her._

_“Don’t say that,” Meetra whispers in her ear, before she passes out._

_\--_

“You fought in the war,” Canderous says flatly as he leans back against the bar, elbows resting on the counter on either side of him.

It’s been the worst-kept secret on the _Ebon Hawk,_ so she decides to humor him. “I assume you know which side.”

He huffs at that, slides her another drink. It’s just the two of them in this section, after Canderous had adequately scared away the drunken Sith officer who hit on her. She takes a slow sip from it, her eyes meeting his from over the glass.

“As a foot soldier.”

“Scout,” she lies seamlessly.

“ _Scout._ And I was a medic.”

“Say what you’re going to say.”

He drops one of his elbows so he can face her, the arm still on the counter sliding forward, framing her on the side. “That little light show wouldn’t go over well with some of your companions.”

“And you think that’s a concern.”

“No, not with you.” He watches as she takes another drink. “The pilot, on the other hand…”

“You’re fishing.”

“Can you blame me?”

She hopes the look she sends him conveys her thoughts on the matter. Clearly it does, because he lets out that loud laugh of his that she likes.

She orders another ale. “Carth can think whatever he wants, so long as he flies the ship.”

“Guess he’s not your type.”

“I don’t have a type.”

He leans forward, their faces close enough that there’s little doubt what’s on his mind. “Not sure I believe you.”

She sets down her glass. He smirks, the hand on the bar moving to her shoulder, thumb rubbing the side of her neck, sliding behind her ear.

“You have no idea,” she says, voice soft but threatening. “What I’ve done to your people.”

“Then they should have fought better.”

He closes in, and she lets him. His mouth is hard and demanding, a hand moving to the back of her head and pressing her forward. It’s unsurprising that he’s rough in this, too. She reaches out and grabs a fistful of his shirt, nips his bottom lip with her teeth. His other hand moves possessively to her waist, as if trying to guide her into his lap.

And then she shoves him away. Without pause, she slips off the barstool.

“Pay the bill,” is all she says, voice flat and unaffected.

His laugh carries out behind her.

\--

_As soon as she’s back on the flag ship, she’s pulled into a corridor, her back pushed flush against the wall._

_Alek’s face hovers over hers, eyes red and nostrils flaring. He slams the flat of his palm against the wall beside her. His other hand grips her forearm._

_“What the fuck are you doing?” He growls._

_“Let go of me.”_

_He does. His body radiates tension. “You deployed with a_ ground unit _?”_

_“You don’t get to question what I do.”_

_“I’m the only one who will !”_

_She finds she can’t deny it. “We needed forward movement on the fortress.”_

_“The abandoned fortress,” he deadpans. “I can see why that requires the main strategist of the entire war effort.”_

_“It was necessary.”_

_“It was reckless.You were commander of the entire assault. What happens if you fall?”_

_“Then I suppose it’s your command.”_

_“We both know I’ve never wanted that.”_

_“What do you want, then? Why are you here?”_

_“I’m here for you. That hasn’t changed, no matter how much you want it to.”_

_“And what’s that supposed to mean?”_

_His fingers slide under the catch of her mask. She doesn’t resist as he pulls it off, tossing it on the floor. Two of his fingers go under her chin, tilting it up._

_“You’re changing,” he whispers, his gaze impossibly sad. “This war is killing you. And you’re letting it.”_

_She falters when she meets his eyes. They’re grey and clear, and in that moment she admits to herself that she is in love, despite everything. But love does not save people, they’ve learned this since they were children. And she has so very many people left to save._

_“It’s changing all of us,” she says, resolute._

_He looks like he wants to argue. Can’t._

_She wraps her fingers around his wrist, lowers his touch from her. He is always so easy to read, with her, with them. There’s disappointment. Grief._

_“Alek.”_

_“What do you need?”_

_For the first time since launching the assault on Dxun, she exhales._

_“I want to sleep.”_

_He smiles at that, something fragile and brittle but nevertheless earnest. Alek steps forward and kisses her forehead._

_“Then let’s go to sleep.”_

_He moves his mouth to hers, and kisses her long and slow and deep. When they part it’s so she can rest her cheek against his chest, so he can wrap his arms around her waist. So they can both uncoil, bit by bit._

_They both know this,_ they, _are on borrowed time. But she holds onto him, all the same._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to what is hopefully the longest chapter in this fic :'D

**Ebon Hawk.**

She’s not sure why she feels apprehensive as she stands outside the cockpit, hand raised and ready to knock. There’s no reason for her to feel this way. What she said to Carth was true, something he needed to hear. That they had barely spoken in a week wasn’t something she cared about. She doesn’t care.

Her fingers curl into her palm as her hand hovers over the panel.

Finally, she grows annoyed with her own hesitance, and slams on it with the side of her hand. It slides open, and Carth doesn’t turn around at first.

She takes a step forward, and the noise catches his attention. He cranes his neck over his shoulder, and their eyes meet. He sighs, running a hand through his hair. The same piece falls over his forehead.

“What’s up?” He manages, looking tired. There’s a short beard on his face.

She crosses her arms over her stomach, leans with one shoulder pressed against the wall. She’s dreading the words, but she needs to say them.

“Time to leave Manaan.”

Carth pulls out of his seat, expression flat as he stands in front of her--far enough away to be professional. “Where to?”

She looks down, biting her lip.

 _Korriban,_ she thinks, _just say it._

But the name won’t fall from her lips. Carth frowns.

“Hey, you okay?”

No. She’s not. But she clears her throat. Tries to get ahold of herself. “Korriban,” she finally manages, “We need to go to Korriban.”

His eyes are warm and brown and they search her face in concern. Why is he concerned? He must not see what he’s looking for, because he runs another hand through his hair. “You got it.”

She gives a tight nod. “Thank you.”

His eyes go wide. “Uh, you’re welcome. I guess.”

She wants to leave. Normally, she would. But instead she just pinches the bridge of her nose. “Carth-”

“What you said the other night,” he cuts in, and she goes very still. “I was angry.”

“I know.”

He looks away, unable to meet her stare. “I haven’t been fair to you. I know that.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to be fair.”

“Look, I’m trying to apologize.”

“It’s taking awhile to get there.”

He scoffs, but when he looks at her again there’s a hint of a grin on his lips.

She smiles back--small, and thin. Not certain why she does it.

“I’m sorry,” he says earnestly.

She’s never been able to apologize, so instead she just nods. Then turns to the astronavigational display.

“How long?”

Carth steps in next to her, staring at the coordinates. “Two weeks, give or take.”

It’s long. She doesn’t know if that’s a relief.

“Let me know when you’re done with pre-flight checks,” she mutters, distracted with her own thoughts.

“Not a problem.” He frowns. “You going to be alright?"

The question is like a wire up her spine. “What?”

“You seem tense. Nervous.” His eyes search hers. “Something happen to you there?”

In her head, there’s whispers. Thin, clinging. Like spider’s webs. She remembers them in her ear, the red sands clinging to her skin. The smell of the dead and the darkness of the tombs.

“No,” she says quickly. “Nothing.”

He looks like he wants to stop her, say something else, but she’s walking away before he can.

She makes it two steps before it happens.

Screaming pain erupts in her head, her ears ringing and her eyes seeing only flashes of white. She’s been tortured before, and this is nothing like it. This is pure agony, raw and untamed and she hears cries, a thousand cries-

“Sola?”

One of her knees buckle. Her fingers dig into the sides of her head.

There’s the sound of water flowing in a stream, the smell of tall grass and sunlight. Sees one vision of a short girl with dark hair and eyes standing in front of a tree- then it changes, the girl older and in the brown robes of a padawan, changes again as the girl wears a mask and-

-she hears laughter, children’s voices echoing that of their teacher’s-

- _cries_ -!

“Sola!”

Her other knee buckles. Her shoulder collapses against the wall, body starting to slump.

Glowing lights of crystal. The thin veins of petals as a flower is held up to the sun-

Carth’s hand cradles the back of her head just before it slams against the floor. Her eyes roll, her last exhale a hitch cut short.

Thousands of voices, silenced.  
Darkness.  
Home. 

\--

_They’re winning._

_It’s something she feels comfortable admitting to herself, now that Dxun and Onderon have both been claimed. She watches the display before her, taking in the lights spread before her. Unlike the others, she sees the trajectories. Understands what planets need to be saved and which ones do not. She is the Force, and as such, she sees how it all connects._

_All roads are starting to lead to one, small point._

_“Which planet is that?” Meetra asks, when her eyes don’t move from the glowing, flickering orbit._

_“Malachor,” she breathes.  
_ _It can all end at Malachor._

_\--_

Something injects into her leg.

“Had us worried there,” Jolee’s voice says from somewhere above her. She doesn’t know how she got here.

She cracks open one eye, then the next. Only able to take in what’s in front of her. “What happened?” She rasps.

“Beats me, kid,” Jolee mutters, putting down the empty stim dispenser. “You got it worst, whatever it was.”

She pulls herself into a sit, taking in the medroom. Standing in the doorway, Juhani and Bastila watch her warily.

“You felt it too?” She assumes.

Juhani gives a tight nod. “I have felt this before.”

“When?”

The Cathar’s voice cracks, just a little. “Taris.”

She presses the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Then we’ve lost a planet?”

“Not just any planet,” Bastila whispers.

She looks up, meeting the younger Jedi’s eyes. Then she knows without having to ask what planet it is. There is only one, in the entire galaxy, that would affect her this way.

“How?” She demands.

Bastila shakes her head. “Impossible to know for sure.”

She slams her eyes closed. In her mind, she can still smell the grass, waving underneath the open sky.

\--

_That night, they barely make it to their quarters. Her hand tugs at the front of his robes, trying to get the large collar off so the rest can go with it. His hands start undoing the heavy belt she wears over her own robes, the thick, metal circle in the center of it colliding to the ground with an echo._

_He takes off her mask, next. “I hate this,” he murmurs, lips going to her neck as he drops it on the ground with her belt._

_“I don’t.” The outer robe falls off, his inner robes a shade of red she doesn’t remember him wearing before. She thinks nothing of it, as her own robes join his on the floor._

_He’s almost a foot taller than her, and so has to bend down to kiss. His hands hold either side of her face. The toes of her boots are the only thing touching the ground. Her fingers make their way to his trousers, pull them down. His hands drop to hold her hips, her undersuit having large cutaways on the sides of her body._

_One of his arms adjusts, and before she knows it, she’s being lifted up. On instinct, she wraps her legs around him--presses her thighs into his waist and crosses her legs against the small of his back. He groans at that, the hand not holding her up burying into her hair as he steers her to their bed._

_He lowers them and her back hits the mattress. Alek then places a hand on either side of her head, lowering his body over hers as he presses heated, frantic kisses on her jaw, her neck, her shoulder. Sex has taken an edge like this recently-- everything is fast, everything is possessive. She doesn’t let him hold her after they’re done. Borrowed time, she knows. It’s all borrowed time. She feels herself slipping away, even in this moment._

_He sighs her name into her ear. She closes her eyes. Tries to banish the worries from her mind._

_When he starts to move, she tries to anchor herself in the present. In him, in her, in the fact that this is their last night before tomorrow._

_She can’t._

_Not for the first time, she hates the fact that she is more than just herself._

\--

Three survivors of Dantooine sit at a table in the mess. It’s late, but somehow they have all managed to wake and end up here.

“It had to be Malak,” Bastila says out loud. “He must have known we were on Dantooine, tried to stop our mission-”

“This wasn’t about a mission,” she says. Her hands are shaking as they grip the mug in front of her.

Juhani watches her, head tilted. “You know something.”

She sends Bastila a slow look. The younger Jedi’s expression looks troubled. She takes a drink of the caf in front of her.

“He wanted us to hurt,” she says without directly addressing Juhani’s unspoken question. “To make a mistake.” She drinks. “This was the only thing he thought would work.”

“It did,” Bastila mutters.

It did, she agrees.

“Coward,” Juhani snarls. Her anger spikes in the Force like a palpable thing. She stands, starting to pace. “We go to Dantooine. Find any survivors-!”

“That is _exactly_ what he wants us to do,” Bastila argues, her next words crestfallen. “We must continue the mission. No matter the cost. Should the Star Forge fall in the wrong hands…”

“Curse your _mission_ ,” Juhani spits. She slams her fist against the table, before storming off to her quarters.

“And you?” Bastila asks, hesitant. “What would you have us do?”

She thinks of an afternoon long ago. When they were by a stream and her trousers were rolled up to her knees.

She meets Bastila’s eyes. The two for once in accord. “We move on. There’s nothing we can do for Dantooine.”

“I’ll inform Carth.”

The door slides open in front of Bastila. Both Jedi look as Mission walks into the room. Bastila’s gaze travels from the Twi’lek to her, before she walks out of the room.

“Hey,” Mission says cautiously, taking the seat next to her. “Big Z told me what happened. You doing okay?”

She meets the teenager’s eyes. Wants to snap, but then she remembers that the girl has lost her own planet, too. To the same man.

“I know we weren’t there for very long,” Mission continues, wonderfully naive, as she so often is. “But it was a good place, y’know? Lots of trees. Nothing like Taris.”

There aren’t any words, but when Mission gives her a smile and reaches for her hand, she lets her hold it.

\--

A few hours later, she feels it before they tell her.

“There’s a problem,” Carth says, breathless as he runs into her room.

“I know.”

She slowly gazes through the viewport, where the _Leviathan_ pulls into sight.

“Here we are again,” she greets the darkness.

\--

_She keeps her war council small for this mission. She, Meetra, Saul, Alek, and a handful of her other generals stand around the war table. She leans over it, moving digital models meant to represent squadrons of the fleet. It’s equal Republic and Jedi._

_“Malachor is an important planet to the Mandalorians,” she explains. “It’s taboo for anyone who isn’t to set foot on the planet. We draw them out with a simultaneous ground and air strike, meant to serve as a diversion.”_

_“Diversion for what,” Saul snaps, eyes trained on the Republic ships._

_She moves her head, knowing he can’t see her expression but somehow willing her displeasure at him. “For Mandalore.”_

_Silence around the table._

_“And who is going for Mandalore,” Alek asks without asking, his gaze pinned on her._

_“A small strike team.”_

_“Lead by?”_

_“Me.”_

_“You’re the strategist for this entire war!” Saul shouts, one of his hands slamming against the table. “We can’t afford you becoming some sort of martyr.”_

_“I don’t plan to die.”_

_“Vigilante, then,” he corrects with a sneer._

_“You can listen, Saul, or you can leave.”_

_Saul glares at her, but his mouth draws into a tight line. She nods, continuing._

_“There will be heavy casualties, but this is what will win us the war.”_

_\--_

_Later, so late it is becoming early, she makes her way back to the war room. Alek is deep asleep where she left him. She doesn’t sleep anymore._

_She is, and is not, surprised to see she is not alone. Meetra stands by the war table. She is pale, thin-lipped, but her eyes focus on the orb meant to represent Malachor._

_“Meetra,” she says softly, knowing why she’s here. What she is about to ask of her._

_She looks up at the sound of her name. “Bao-Dur told you what he was working on,” she surmises._

_“He did.”_

_Her fingers trace along the edge of the table. “He’s so angry…they took his planet, his family.”_

_“And they’ll take more.”  She walks until she is at Meetra’s side. Meetra Surik, the only person besides Alek she gives a damn about in the galaxy. “It’s done, then?”_

_She nods. “He says it works.”_

_“We’ll need it,” she says quietly._

_“I know.” Meetra meets her gaze. She is not wearing the mask, this morning. “He can’t give the order. He’d never forgive himself. It would ruin him.”_

_She swallows, understanding what she’s asking. “He couldn’t” she promises, “He’s just a tech.”_

_She sees Meetra’s chin quiver, just for a moment. War has made a general out of her, just as she had promised Alek it would._

_“When?” Is all she asks, voice hollow._

_She tells her._

_\--_

**Leviathan.**

She wakes up to the sound of a low buzz. Immediately, she recognizes it as a containment cell and her eyes snap open.

“You okay?” Carth asks to the side of her.

She turns, pulling herself into a stand. He’s in his undersuit, so is she. Not even shoes.

“Fine,” she says, mouth dry from what she assumes is a sedative.

“They haven’t sent anyone in yet,” Bastila adds, sitting in a meditative pose in the center of her cell.

“What can we expect when they do?” Carth mutters.

“Torture,” she answers before Bastila can. “They’ll want to know our mission.”

Carth meets her gaze. “They won’t.”

She nods. “Saul’s here,” she states, knowing Carth’s hatred for the man. It’s only slightly worse than her own.

“I know. And it ends as soon as I’m free from this cage.”

“ _Do not_ jeopardize the mission for petty vengeance!” Bastila snaps.

Carth looks to her instead. “I need this,” he says, not quite a beg.

She thinks of what she would do, were she in his position. Thinks about the snivelling admiral who wanted nothing more for her to be at the wrong end of a vibroblade.

“If there’s an opportunity, it’s yours.”

Carth seems to sag in relief. “Thank you.”

Bastila opens her mouth to protest, but the door slides open.

She closes her eyes, takes a breath. She knows what’s coming. Knows what he wants to do with her, now that he has her. She remembers the sneers, the lingering looks as though he didn’t know what to make of his own hatred for her. Anger fills her, as she thinks that he could kill her in this cell if he wanted to. That she would meet her fate at the hands of Saul fucking Karath.

No. She won’t let that happen. She is stronger than that. All of them in this room are stronger than that.

It’s impossible for her to smother her rage, and she knows that as Saul Karath enters it resonates around her. There is no mask, this time, for her to hide behind. He walks ahead and starts speaking to Carth, but she can’t focus on their words. She loathes him. She’d kill him right now if she could.

“ _Sola…_ ” Bastila cautions to her side, emphasizing her name. And it’s then that she knows Bastila has figured out her secret. Perhaps has known it all along.

Her fist clenches at her side.

Saul turns away from Carth. “-Lord Malak is much more interested in your Jedi companions.”

“The Sith will be destroyed...as will you if you don’t turn from this path,” Bastila says, far calmer than she could ever manage.

But she has to manage. She has to play her part. If he knew, she’s certain he would do everything he could to smother her in this cage.

“The dark side is hard to resist...or so I’ve been told.” He finally acknowledges her, sending a slow look that makes her skin crawl and lighting spark under it. “I wonder if your companion is as devoted to the light as you are?”

“You’re wasting your time,” she bites out.

Saul steps closer to her. Were she not in a cell, she could smell his breath. “You’re defiant. I’m sure Lord Malak will find your loyalty to the Jedi amusing.”

She isn’t loyal. But she is their enemy. She’ll tear this ship apart if she has to.

“The Dark Lord would probably reward me if I just killed you once and for all.”

 _Do it,_ she mentally goads. _Try all you want._

“But he may want to question you given the trouble you’ve caused him...and the history between you.”

At the statement, she acutely feels both Carth and Bastila’s eyes on her. She breathes in deep through her nose.

“What are you talking about.” The statement is forced and brittle, even to her own ears. But Saul has always been willfully blind and ignorant to what doesn’t align with his worldview.

And he’s wanted nothing more than to make her feel stupid, less than.

“You mean...oh this can’t be true, can it? You really don’t know what’s going on here, do you? Well I won’t be the one to deprive Malak of telling you himself.”

 _This,_ she thinks hatefully to Malak, wherever he is. _This is who you trusted?_

“The Dark Lord will no doubt torture you for his own twisted pleasure-”

The sentence escapes before she can stop it. “I’m sure he will.”

Saul pauses, and for a moment she thinks there’s actually a spark of intelligence in his gaze. He watches her, and she watches him back. Cold. Furious.

He clears his throat, and she knows he’s more shaken than he’s let on. “Lord Malak is in another sector, it may be some time before he arrives. I’ll just have to fill in for him until then.”

For the first time, she lets herself think of Malak. Not the man in her memories, but the one who betrayed her. The one making his way to her now. She wonders what he’ll do, what he’s capable of. Who he’d kill or torture to get to her.

Her eyes slide to Carth. Then Bastila. She thinks of the others: Canderous, Jolee, Mission, Zalbaar, Juhani. The droids, particularly HK.

He’d tear through them all, if it meant he got to be the one who killed her. If he got to be the one who ended this sick, corroded thing between them once and for all. If he was finally free of her, because she knows he’s not. She doesn’t think he ever will be, even if she were to die.

Saul stares straight at her, vindictive little smirk on his face. And she vows that no matter what Malak decides to do, she _will_ kill this human bucket of gizka piss.

“Activate the torture fields,” he says with satisfaction.

It’s a jolt through her entire body, making it curl into itself. She hears cries, then she realizes that they’re hers. Carth’s. Bastila’s. It’s a dark thing, she realizes, that it’s only now she discovers it matters to her whether her companions live or die. The haughty tilt of Bastila’s chin. The tired greetings from behind the pilot’s chair. These are things they would take from her.

No one _takes_ anything from her.

The electric pulse stops, and she drops to a knee. She’s aware of Bastila and Saul discussing something, but all she can hear is the blood rushing through her ears. She knows Saul set the intensity of her charge higher than the others.

“Do it again,” she hisses from where she kneels, knowing Saul will hear her. “Coward.”

“Sola-” Carth protests.

Saul watches her, pale eyes calculating. What he does next surprises her, a rare thing.

He takes a step back. “Your will is too strong for that.” His eyes go to Carth for reasons she doesn’t understand. “I’ll ask you a question. Every wrong answer, _he_ suffers.”

She narrows her eyes at him. Carth, she believes, he wants just as dead as her.

“My pain doesn’t matter! Don’t tell him anything!” He cries, and she hears him strike a hand against the containment cell.

She turns, meets Carth’s eyes. She doesn’t know why there’s worry in them. For her?

She pushes herself up into a stand. Presses her hand flat against the containment cell.

“He’ll get nothing,” she promises.

Carth nods, relieved.

Saul’s voice betrays his annoyance that neither of them are looking at him. “Where is the Jedi Academy on which you were trained?”

She and Carth haven’t turned away from each other. She won’t. Because she’s been tortured before. She knows, more than anyone, what it means to have someone waiting on the other side of the dark. She can be that person for him.

Slowly, Carth nods. She understands, takes a breath. Then:

“Go fuck yourself,” she answers.

Carth starts to scream.

She doesn’t look away.

\--

”I see I am wasting my time here,” Saul spits, after Carth has fallen to his knees, hair plastered down with sweat.

He is a child, she thinks. He is nothing more than a child, throwing a tantrum at having his favorite toy denied. And she knows his words, his idle threats are for her.

“When Malak arrives you will learn that my techniques are considered merciful among the Sith!”

She faces him, then. And when he sees her expression, he takes a half a step back. Terror is on his face that he can’t quite smother. He knows. Good. She wants him to know.

“You better hope,” she says lowly, calmly. “I don’t leave this cage.”

His eyes go wide and in a panic he slams the controls for the containment cells with his fist.

Lighting courses through her, through them, and she only hears their combined cries, smells nothing but burned hair and sweat, before she returns to the darkness.

\--

She wakes up when she feels her arm being pulled. Her entire body is coated in sweat, her limbs numb.

Bastila’s eyes meet hers. “Don’t try to move,” she whispers, soothing. “Saul’s men continued to torture you after you passed out.”

“I don’t know why,” Carth says, concern on his features as he stands next to Bastila. “But you got the worst of it.”

“I know why,” she slurs, fighting to regain her consciousness. Her arm is pulled further, and soon her feet are dragging along the floor.

She looks up and sees a square jaw. “Canderous?”

“Don’t squirm,” he orders as he presses her against his side, her arm over his shoulders. “Wouldn’t want anything to fall off.”

His fingers press a little too tightly where they’re positioned on her side. Worried, she realizes. He’s worried for her.

“How did you get here?”

“I’ll tell you another time,” he states. “For now, we need to get off this ship.”

“Everyone else?”

“Safe. Canderous managed to release all the containment cells on this block.” Carth hovers beside her, expression tight with worry. She doesn’t understand. Why they look at her like this, why they care. Why they didn’t just leave her to rot in the cell. She might have done so to them.

“We’ll need to split up,” Bastila observes. “A team to gain access to the bridge and hanger controls, and another to escort our companions back to the _Hawk_ and protect our escape.”

The Force flows through her, gradually easing the pains. Letting her breathe more smoothly. She sends Canderous a brief, thankful look before she pushes away from him. He lets her go, though the hand on her side lingers for a moment longer than it needs to.

“Malak will be here soon,” she says.

Bastila nods. “Yes, I sense him approaching.”

She meets grey eyes. “We will need to be there, if he is.”

“I understand.”

“Saul is mine,” Carth cuts in. He meets her eyes. She sees the stubborn set of his jaw and knows it will take a tranquilizer to stop him.

“Canderous,” she finally concedes.

“Yeah?”

“Get the others.”

A long silence. She doesn’t face him, but she feels his hesitance.

Finally: “Don’t do anything stupid.” He watches her profile. “Won’t be there to cover your ass next time.”

“Cover other people’s asses.”

He snorts, but he obeys her orders. Soon, it’s just the three of them.

Bastila straightens her shoulders. “Canderous found our supplies. Here.”

She tosses one lightsaber at her, then two.

She grabs them, fingers gripping the handles tightly. It’s time to find Saul.

\--

_Their ship rocks almost violently as it aligns with the Mandalorian flagship. Their dreadnought is large, but battered. And it’s taken several thousand lives to get her here, to this moment._

_She stands outside the hall, her fingers gripping the handles of her lightsaber tightly. Alek stands beside her, after insisting to be part of the boarding party. His lightsaber is drawn, its blue light the only illumination in the eerily dark tunnel._

_He says her name. She swallows, her heart beating faster and faster. He says her name again, and she turns to look at him._

_“Don’t die,” he manages. And she hears what it is he doesn’t say: don’t leave. don’t let me be alone._

_She nods. This, is a promise she can make him. A promise she_ has _to make him._

_Her hand finds his. Gives it one final squeeze as the door to the enemy’s ship, to Mandalore’s ship, slides open._

_Red and violet join the blue._

\--

Her lightsabers disengage with a sharp _snap-hiss,_ and she watches coldly as Saul lies on the ground in front of them, choking to death on his own blood. She let Carth take the final shot.

It’s overdue. She smiles at his dying face before she turns toward the exit. They are surrounded by bodies, having carved their way here. Bastila and Carth follow behind her, the pair of them quiet but resolute. What happened is what needed to be done, but she remembers her brand of ruthless pragmatism is new to both of them.

“Carth…” Saul wheezes behind them. “Wait.”

“We don’t have time Carth!” Bastila protests.

He meets her eyes. She nods.

She doesn’t turn around. But she hears Saul’s laugh. Carth shouting at Bastila.

“You knew?”

“Now’s not the time-”

She shuts her eyes. She knows what Saul told him. It’s the final way for him to get back at her, after all.

Carth walks past her without a word. And she moves forward.

They have a hanger to open-

She stops in her step. A few seconds later, Bastila looks at her over her shoulder, eyes wide.

“Is that-?”

“Yes,” she says tightly. “Malak’s here.”

Bastila swallows.

She breaks into a run. “We need to go.”

Bastila follows after her. Then Carth. Small favors.

\--

_She agrees to his terms. Alek tries to stop her, but she force-shoves him out of the room, sliding it shut behind her. This isn’t his fight. It’s hers, she’s the only one that can do it._

_Before her, Mandalore the Ultimate charges his battle axe. It’s a heavy weapon, resting on the floor. She watches, as electricity flows through it. It’s all come down to this. Him, and her. Surrounding them in a half circle are other Mandalorians, armed with their blasters pointed at the door she’s barred. They’re there to ensure the honor of the single-combat, to make sure no one interferes in what is sure to be a glorious battle._

_She knows better. There is nothing glorious about battle. Only winners and losers, the dead and the breathing._

_She will not be the dead today._

_She takes a step forward, and her lightsabers punch into being._

_“I’ve been wanting this for a long time,” Mandalore says, and she hears his eagerness. “It was always meant to be the two of us.”_

_She looks at the axe. Puts her body into a crouch. She knows immediately that she is faster and smaller than him, and so it will be a matter of agility against strength._

_On the other side of the door, she hears Alek screaming her name, his fists beating against the metal. He is the last of their boarding party still alive._

_She is not afraid. She was afraid days ago, when planning the assault. But this, this feels right. Feels easy._

_Mandalore is just one more person to kill. Only a man._

_He makes the first strike. She dodges. They had agreed that there would be no Force powers, and she planned to uphold the deal. She didn’t need to rely on anything other than herself in this. The Mandalorians needed to see that she could hold her own in their way. That she could best their best, following their rules._

_He swings again. She moves._

_It is a long fight. She’s lost one of her lightsabers when his axe crushed the handle, barely missing her hand. Half of his mask is cracked from where she attempted to sever his head from his body. She’s holding her side where she’s sure a rib is broken, he’s limping on his right leg._

_He makes an error. She sees the gap, an opening as he lifts his arm._

_She slides down, raising a fist. Her lightsaber catches his side, cutting up into his armpit. It’s not fatal, but he falls._

_She advances, her lightsaber drawn across his neck before he can do anything. His mask stares back, so like her own._

_“It was,” he wheezes, “The Sith. They…” He coughs. “They’re why we started.”_

_She listens, processes._

_And then swipes his head from his body._

\--

The door to the hanger opens, and she watches as a lone figure approaches them.

It’s been months since she’s last seen him. In that time, he’s tried to kill her and destroyed two planets. Destroyed their home. He hasn’t seen her without a mask in at least a year, and so she watches as he watches, the two of them locking eyes for what feels like an eternity. For a moment, there’s only him and her. Master and apprentice. Betrayer and betrayed.

 _Why?_ She wants to ask. _Why Dantooine?_ Because everything else she understands, but not that.

“Darth Malak!” Bastila cries, adjusting into a fighting stance. Her lightsaber handle flies into her grip.

She doesn’t ignite hers. Merely watches.

To her side, she hears the charge of Carth’s blasters.

“Down you go!” He yells, and she closes her eyes. He’s foolish, in that moment, and Malak is sure to make him pay for it.

He does, in less than a second. She watches as his hand outstretches, shoving Carth to the ground with a pulse of Force energy. Her companion doesn’t have time to cry, as his back slides across the floor.

Malak smirks at Carth’s fallen body. And then he _laughs,_ because he must know Carth means something to her. Perhaps more than what’s the truth, but the truth has never mattered much to Malak.

Her fingers itch to grab her lightsabers. But she doesn’t. Not yet.

“Don’t leave,” he commands to Bastila, but he hasn’t stopped staring at her. “I’ve spent far too much time hunting you down.”

Bastila swings her lightsaber. “The Force fights with us!”

He ignores the obvious provocation. Steps closer to her. “I had to see you with my own eyes,” he says, “Why did the Jedi spare you?”

She stays silent. He steps forward again.

“Are you here for vengeance, then?”

She thought she would be. Ever since her kidnapping by Bastila’s strike team, she wondered what would happen if they were to meet again. It had played out in her mind thousands of times. In each of them, one died. Her, him. They were each other’s end.

But now, after Saul, after so much time with people who weren’t under her command or his, she just feels _empty._ Alone.

He grabs her chin, tilts her head to face him. She lets him, and stays stoic as his eyes search hers.

“They say you’ve lost your memory,” he says, brows drawn.

“Let go of her!” Carth cries, but Malak only lifts his other hand, shoving him much harder than before. She attempts to turn and see the damage he’s suffered, but Malak holds her chin tight--redirects her attention to him.

“Your companions,” he taunts. “Have they figured it out? Do they _know_ who it is they follow?”

She hears the bitterness. Still, she does not speak. Does not reach for her weapons.

“That one,” his eyes go over her shoulder, to where Carth’s fallen. “Does he matter to you? What will you do if he screams? If I send lightning down his veins?”

She already knows the answer to that, her mind going back to the containment cells. When she doesn’t rise to the bait, his eyes narrow, and he watches her face, her expressions.

Carth, she thinks, was right. She is different from who she was before.

“You truly don’t know, do you?” His voice is caught somewhere between awe and anger. Anger, she knows, that he if he kills her now, it won’t be as satisfying.

He drops his hand, throws her down to the floor as if disgusted. Then he begins to pace around her, a kath hound playing with its kill.

“You won’t be able to hide behind the Jedi Council’s work for long. Your real identity must be resurfacing!”

“My real identity,” she echoes, using one hand to push herself up.

His hand extends, and she’s shoved back down to the floor.

“You must recognize what you once were-”

He says her name.

“-Revan.”

\--

_After Mandalore’s defeat, there’s silence. The helmeted faces of his crew watch her, blasters aimed at her chest._

_And then they stand down, step back. She has a clear path back to the door._

_Exhausted and hurting, she lifts up her hand. With a weak motion, she slides it open with a finger._

_Alek bursts through the second it has enough give. He runs, grabbing her by the arms and pressing her against his chest. She can sense him looking over her shoulder, where the decapitated body of Mandalore lies._

_Her breath comes in pained. He’s holding her ribs, jarring pain spiking through her._

_“What is it?” He demands. “What have they done?”_

_“Ribs,” is all she can manage._

_He steps away, although his hands stay on her biceps. “You shoved me away,” he accuses, voice dark._

_“I did what I had to.”_

_“And now?” He presses._

_She looks out the viewport of Mandalore’s flagship, sees the Republic and Mandalorian fleets drawing closer and closer to Malachor’s surface._

_“Now, something else needs to be done.”_

_She takes a shaking breath, before she looks up at him._

_“Help me back to the ship.”_

_He watches her, and she knows he can’t get a good read of her behind the mask. But with one quick motion, he lifts her into his arms--one under her knees, the other under her shoulders, and follows her instructions._

_\--_

He goes to shove her to the floor again, but she raises the back of her arm and it deflects, absorbed. Then she stands, and when she throws out her own hand he takes a half a step back.

“You know,” he realizes.

“I suspected as much,” Bastila says as she takes a stance beside her. “You were dying, but I saw the spark in your mind. We did what we could to save you.”

“You wanted to make me a puppet,” she corrects neutrally.

“A slave,” Malak snarls.

“No!” Bastila insists. “We wanted to redeem you, Revan. The Council thought this mission would-”

“Your Council is _dead_ ,” he interrupts, and Bastila flinches. “And _she_ ,” he nearly vibrates with rage. “Is not worth redemption.”

Revan doesn’t look away from him. “You didn’t kill me,” she says flatly. “So you did the next best thing. Was that it?”

His nostrils flare, fists clench at his sides.

“What did he do?” Bastila asks.

“Dantooine.” The word speaks for itself. She had hated it as a child. But after the war, after everything, it was the only place that had been safe. A refuge. Something she had learned too late, felt only with its death.

“You’ll pay for that,” Bastila promises.

Revan steps closer to him. Around her, the Force starts to swell, expand. He’s said her name, and now she means to reclaim it. “You tried to kill me.”

He does not stand down. “Yes.”

“You failed.”

“For now.”

“Was it all for power?” Her eyes narrow. “Or to hurt me?”

“ _Power_ , _”_ he lies.

When she doesn’t respond, he continues.

“You are _weak._ The only thing I regret was betraying you from afar.” He ignites his lightsaber, swings it in a quick circle. “And the Jedi have made you weaker still!”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Revan moves one foot a half-step back. Malak tenses at the motion, and she knows it’s because he’s recognized her fighting stance.

“I can finish this,” she says coldly. “Can _you_?”

His eyes widen at that, and his eyebrows draw into a v-shape. “You are nothing, you _mean_ nothing!”

“Liar.” She ignites one of her lightsabers. Then the other. Holds them in the reverse grip she favors. “We’ll never mean nothing to each other.”

He flinches, her words hitting like a slap. She knows his next words are meant to be menacing, but it sounds like begging. “Then we end this how it should be. Master and apprentice.”

She nods.

Malak throws out his hands, and she feels Bastila and Carth go into stasis beside her.

Revan inhales.

She brings up her blades just in time to block the lightning he throws at her. She pivots, nodding at the floor and sending a grate flying at him with the motion. Malak shoves it away with the back of his hand. Revan channels the Force into her body, pushing off the floor and swinging down at him. He deflects barely in time, then pushes her with enough strength that she’s sent back a few feet.

“You’re weaker,” he realizes.

It’s true. “Not weak enough.”

Energy gathers around her fists, and she points her blades at him. Lighting sparks then flies. He’s startled by the move, and some hits his chest. He staggers, but brings his lightsaber to deflect.

“Stand down,” she orders. “Or I’ll kill you. And I won’t need a ship to do it.”

They both know she means it. It is, perhaps, the one thing that’s always made her more ruthless than him in the end.

He sneers, then raises his arm. There’s a few sparks, and then before Revan can react, a duct is falling from the ceiling. She manages to dodge just in time, but when she stands Malak is gone.

Revan’s eyes dart around, trying to search for him. After a moment, she latches on to his signature in the Force and runs.

The hanger bay is a mess of interlocking corridors. Her attention is torn between navigating it and tracking him. She turns a corner, and barely avoids his lightsaber hitting her neck. Revan bends backward, the heat of it warming underneath her chin but not connecting. In response, she pivots, and slams the heel of her boot into his chest. It propels him backward. She pushes forward, and they move closer and closer to the center of the bay.

He’s right. She is weaker. Already, she feels her body beginning to tire--unused to being a conduit for the Force raging inside her.

“Pathetic,” Malak hisses.

Revan scowls, bringing her lightsabers up to slash down on his face. He pulls his up, drawn horizontally and acting as a brace for her blades. She grits her teeth, pushing down, as he tries to do the same--redirecting her blades toward her own neck.

“Who should I kill next?” Malak says. His expression tight with effort. “Bastila? That soldier who’s half in love with you?” He laughs, although the sound is slightly breathless from strain. “We both know what loving you ends in.”

Revan fights to keep her control, arms starting to strain.

His bloodshot eyes meet hers. “Surrender, and I’ll make it painless for them. Even that soldier.”

She tries to open herself to the Force. To let it channel through her like it did, so effortlessly, months ago.

“You were right,” he bites out. “It was to hurt you. All of it. To make you suffer.” His weight bares down on her, and she takes a step backward. “ _You have not suffered enough_!”

He kicks her in the stomach. She gasps, dropping to her knees. Before she can get up, recover, his hand thrusts out and she feels her limbs go numb. Her body frozen.

Stasis. He’s put her in stasis.

She looks up at him as he stands over her, his lightsaber ignited. _Do it,_ she thinks. _End it if you can, Alek._

He hesitates.

And a door opens. Revan watches, powerless, as Bastila runs in, her lightsaber ignited.

“This isn’t over, Malak!”

He looks down at Revan. “Another piece on your dejarik board, Revan?”

She can’t flinch. Malak looks at her for a few, long seconds. Eyes burning into her.

“Maybe this one _will_ hurt,” he promises, before he walks toward Bastila.

Revan stares at her, at her determined expression despite the anxiety and panic she must be feeling. Bastila doesn’t move, waiting for Malak to strike first. In that instant, she thinks painfully of someone half-forgotten.

Bastila charges ahead with a cry, the door sliding shut behind her.

Bastila throws herself at Malak’s mercy. And Revan's angry. Because she was weak, he won.

...and she’s failed the young Jedi, who makes her remember Meetra Surik.

\--

_Minutes after she gives the order, it happens. It’s quiet, at first. A soft pulse._

_Then it expands. Revan senses it rush over the ground forces. Their people, her people. It makes no distinction. Then it grows, moving over the planet itself, stretching into space. From her place on the flagship, she watches as Republic and Mandalorian ships collapse in on themselves, crumpling like aluminum tins. Then the planet itself._

_It cracks, green light pulsing out from where it fissures. The parts of the planet slide away, and Revan senses the deaths of hundreds of thousands with it. There is the pain of death, but then there’s one cry that tears completely through her._

_Meetra Surik burns in the Force like a nova, and then collapses like a dying star. Revan feels every moment, as she is_ eaten _by what’s happened. Pulled into some void, unable to escape._

_Meetra, her friend, is gone with Malachor._

_Revan falls to her knees._ What have I done? _She asks.  
_ What you had to, _she answers._

_Beside her, Alek watches the destruction outside the viewport, his jaw clenching._

_It’s over in moments. And the silence afterward damns them all._


	10. Chapter 10

**Ebon Hawk.**

They don’t speak until the _Ebon Hawk_ has made the jump into hyperspace, for which she is thankful. Survival first, as always. But once the immediate threat is gone, it’s just her, Carth, and an empty co-pilot’s seat neither are looking at.

“You knew all along, didn’t you?” He finally mutters.

Her jaw clenches, but she doesn’t look away. She never looks away. “Yes.”

Carth stares at her, as if he’s trying to reconcile two images that don’t line up. For some reason, it matters to her what he sees. Sola isn’t her, never was her. It angered her to even think it.

But she realizes now that she’ll miss pretending. Her mind keeps playing Malak’s words. Over and over again.

Revan is not worth redemption. Revan should suffer. No one should love her.

These are things she’s made peace with. But Malak always did know how to hurt her better than most.

“You’ve made fools of us all, then. Least of all yourself.”

She doesn’t look away.

Carth drags a hand down, leaving it over his mouth as he grips the sides of his face. “You get two hours,” he promises.

He closes his eyes, sinks into his chair. “Either you tell them, or I do.”

“And then?’

“I don’t know.”

\--

_She counts the stars, one by one by one. The Force has shown her the invisible threads between them, asterisms she needs to complete. One distant flare of light catches her attention the most, the sole object of her fixation as she loses herself into a meditative trance. She can do those standing, now._

_Revan folds her arms over her stomach, leans one shoulder against the viewport. The ship is preparing to depart the Chorlian Sector and make way to Taris, where they will mourn their dead and celebrate their victory. The war is over._

_Her eyes dart away from the main star, looking from planet to planet. There is a reason, she knows, that the war ended in_ this _sector--that they are centered in between Nathema and Rekkiad. Her mind works, connecting these planets to others: Khar Delba, Kesh, Korriban._

_She leans forward, thoughts racing faster as she presses her palm against the viewport. There’s something there-_

_“Revan.”_

_“What?” She snarls, as the thoughts break apart._

_Alek moves to her side. She has not thought to seek him out in days, not since building the HK unit. He seems angry at her outburst, but she can’t care about his feelings. Or her own. She tries to look at the stars again, to see where the pulls and threads were intersecting, connecting her-_

_But she can’t. For now, it’s gone._

_She brings her fingers to the bridge of her nose, tries to rub the fatigue from her eyes. “What?” She asks again, more level._

_Alek has long since stopped asking her when she’s last slept. It’s a foolish question, after Malachor. Revan doesn’t think she’ll ever sleep again, after Malachor._

_“We’re departing the system.” He steps back, away. “They’re waiting on your order.”_

_When he leaves, she doesn’t acknowledge it. Revan knows, everyday, that he feels he is looking at a stranger._

_Maybe that’s who she is, ultimately. The Force itself. Something unknowable._

_Something unloveable._

_She looks at the planets one more time, then orders the fleet to depart for Taris._

_\--_

“Heard it was pretty bad in there, kid.”

Revan’s in her own quarters on the side of the ship, trying to distance her feelings from what has to come next. Her chin is in her fist where she sits in a simple tank and shorts, her braided dark hair falling over one shoulder. It hurt to wear her clothes. There are still angry, red welts all over her body. From the torture. From Malak. Even with Force healing, she knows several of them will take time to go away.

“Yes,” she agrees.

Jolee steps in, and she has to bite down on her lower lip when she sees he has a medpack in his hand. “Don’t complain about the sting,” he says crossly as he sits next to her on the bed. “You did most of this yourself.”

Revan’s done most of it to herself. But she remains dutifully silent as the old man begins to patch her up. His hands are steady, and she feels the soothing signature of his healing in the Force as he administers treatment.

“Carth knows,” is all she says. It’s not a secret between the two of them, never has been.

Jolee snorts. “Took him long enough.” He raises his eyebrows at her as he starts to wrap her forearm. “But that’s what you get for wishful thinking, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not everyone thinks as little of you as you do, is all I’m saying.”

Revan swallows tightly. Her stare burns a hole through the wall across from her. “They should.”

“Should what? Fear you? Run away in terror of the Oh So Mighty Revan?” Jolee hmphs. “You let gizka run around wild. Play cards with a fourteen-year-old hustler and _lose._ Almost blew up the damn ship trying to make a grenade. We’re supposed to forget all that and cower just because your name’s different? Try again. I’m too stubborn and set in my ways for all that.”

He drops her arm. She lets it fall in her lap.

Jolee starts to apply bacta on her shoulder. It’s burned the worst.

“You ever been in love?”

Revan turns her head, but he’s not looking at her.

 _We both know what loving you ends in._ “Once.”

He gives a grunt of acknowledgement. Not for the first time, he sees right through her. “In your life, you’ll have many men and women. Perhaps you already have. But consider yourself lucky, for finding it at all.”

Revan looks away from him, staring at the floor. “It doesn’t feel lucky.”

“It will,” he states easily. “Once passion clears from it, anyway. Once time passes.”

She thinks of his lightsaber aiming for her chin. She thinks of hers, which successfully landed years ago. “Passion is not how I would describe it.”

“Whatever you want to call it, then. Fear, anger. Even hate. And sure, these things can come with love, can lead to the Dark Side.”

His fingers gently touch her chin, and she wonders why it makes her flinch until she remembers how Malak had grabbed it. “Not always, though. Passion is not love. Because love…” He guides healing energy into his touch. Her grimace fades. “Love will save you, not condemn you.”

Jolee gently turns her face to his. Revan’s throat feels tight as she takes in his expression--soft, but more importantly, sympathetic.

“An old man’s opinion doesn’t mean much these days, but. You know what I think?”

Revan tries to smile but can’t. “Never.”

So he smiles for her. “I think you’ve got a whole ship here of people wanting to love you. If you’d let them.”

Jolee calmly packs up his medpack and goes. And Revan sits for a moment, bending down and burying her face in her hands.

\--

_They love her._

_The survivors of Malachor walk the long streets of Taris, cheers and streamers and general fanfare surrounding them. A celebration of victory.  A parade for veterans. She hears her name, being cheered over and over again. The people scream happily when she passes them._

_Beside her, she sees Alek try to transform his grimace into a smile. Not for the first time, she is glad for her mask. The war is over. And she’d rather be anywhere else._

_There’s too much noise._

_Revan’s head is pounding, but she fights past the aura of her vision to recall the lines, the trajectories. She has all the pieces she needs, and she’s so close to lining up the parts. Malachor. Kesh. Kha-_

_Her attention is suddenly drawn to a man in the crowd. He is not cheering, not celebrating, not smiling. Out of his uniform, she hardly recognizes him._

_They lock eyes._

_His are haunted as her own, dark circles underneath. Skin pale and sallow, defeat and anger swirling in equal measure under the skin._

_She wants to tell him that she knows. That she understands. That war has made killers of them all. That if it had been her and Alek instead of them, she would have made the same decision._

_Bao-Dur watches her for another moment, before he turns and she loses him in the crowd. She’ll never see him again._

_The war is over._

_\--_

It was almost over. There had been Mission, with her shock and prodding questions and a final, dedicated reassurance that did something to Revan’s gut. Zaalbar, with a thankful disinterest. Juhani’s torn sentiments. HK’s jubilant statements at regaining his memory.

There was one person left to talk to.

Revan walks into the garage. Canderous is working on, of all things, her swoop. She sees his boots sticking out from the undercarriage.

“What do you want?” His customary greeting echoes.

She’s killed his people. She’s killed a lot of his people. Revan moves to the workbench, sitting on its stool.

“Have a moment?”

She hears the hydrospanner being put down, and Canderous rolls out, grease and coolant staining his vest, his shirt. Revan knows, without having to ask, that he was doing these repairs for her.

“Yeah?” He asks, grabbing a rag and running it between his fingers to remove the grime. He doesn’t look expectant, and makes no comment on the repairs. Just watches her.

Revan thinks about how he held her up long enough for them to escape.

Finally, she begins. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Getting us out.” It’s a simple start.

He snorts, tossing the rag down and walking over to where she sits. “Not the first time I’ve woken up in the morgue, won’t be the last.”

Canderous takes in the bacta patches, the angry red skin underneath them. She’s still wearing her thin shorts and tank, but there’s nothing heated in his gaze. Just a furrowing of brows that makes her feel even more exposed.

“What happened after I left?”

Revan can answer that, at least. “Malak.”

“Good thing you didn’t die, then. No honor in getting killed by a coward.”

“Honor’s the least of my worries.”

“You got something to tell me?”

She sits, trying to say it. Revan does not know why it’s harder with him than the others, but it is. “I’m-”

“Revan?”

She starts, looking up. He’s not smiling, but he’s not angry, either.

“The Twi’lek brat can’t keep her mouth shut,” he explains.

She observes him, but there’s nothing different about him than there was a day ago. Her fingers curl into fists on top of her thighs. “How do you feel about it?”

It’s a stupid thing to ask. How someone feels about her being herself, reclaiming her name. But it’s something she wants to know--genuinely wants to know--from him.

He sighs, and she tenses when he starts to move.

But all he does is lower himself to her level, resting on his haunches. When he meets her gaze, his words are simple and sincere.

“You defeated the Mandalore clans in the war, Revan. You were the only one in the galaxy who could best us. We had never met one like you before, and never since.”

One of his hands--larger and more calloused, stained with grease from her swoop--rests over one of hers. He waits until her hand relaxes, until she undoes her fist before speaking next.

“How can you even ask if I will follow you?” He questions softly.

Revan gives a tight smile, shaken. “I never asked if you’d follow me.”

Canderous brings her hand up, presses its palm against his chest. She feels his heartbeat--steady, unshakeable.

“I’m your man until the end, Revan. No matter how this plays out.”

\--

_She holds the datapad in her hand, reading it for the third or fourth time. Once again, she’s found herself at the workbench, although these days she no longer keeps a hydrospanner in her hair._

_“What are you going to do?” Alek lays on their bed, alone as is increasingly the case these days. His hands are folded underneath his head, and he’s not looking at her._

_“Refuse.”_

_“It would be declaring war on the Council.”_

_“We declared war on the Council the moment we left Dantooine.”_

_Alek says his next words carefully, as if intending them to hit directly. “Meetra plans to return, to await their trial.”_

_She closes her eyes. “She can go, if that’s what she wants.”_

_“If she defects, others will.”_

_“No they won’t,” Revan says, feeling tired in every part of her._

_Alek attempts to keep his tone as flat, as removed as hers can be. But she hears the anger, the spite in his next words. “You should send that droid after her.”_

_Not much can move her, these days. But she flinches at his words. “What?”_

_“The HK was built for a reason,” he goads, before rolling on his side so he faces away from her. “The war’s over. See it through.”_

_Revan stares at him, until the day cycle on the ship begins. It’s the first time, in all their years together, that she has heard Alek speak this way. It’s the first time that he’s treated her like she’s a monster._

_She leaves their quarters. Unknown to both of them, they will never share a room again after this night._

\--

When she walks into the cockpit, the first thing she does is set down a mug of caf on his armrest. Then, wordlessly, she drops into the co-pilot’s chair. She stays there, drinking her own mug, while he doesn’t move.

“What are you going to do?” She finally asks.

Carth doesn’t look at her. “Not much of a choice, is there? We need to find the Star Forge, and you’re probably the only one who can do it.”

“Probably,” she agrees.

“The others know?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re still on the ship.”

“I am.”

For the first time, he looks at her. “I lost everything on Telos. My wife, my son. _Everything_ , to your men. _Yours._ ”

“I know.” She takes a drink from her mug. Her caf is almost gone, his hasn’t been touched.

“Malak gave that order,” she says softly.

“I know-” Carth shakes his head, looking defeated. “Yeah, I.” He sighs. “I know.”

“I’ll stop him.”

“I’d like to believe that. Really, I would.”

“I understand.”

He stares out the viewport, hands steepled over his mouth. Revan watches him, assessing. Waiting.

“I don’t know how you live with yourself.” There’s no anger in his words, only pity.

Revan brings her knees to her chest, resting her cheek against the top of them. “I don’t.”

Carth looks like he wants to say something, but can’t find the words for it. Eventually, he just leans back in his chair.

Then he picks up the mug she brought him. Drinks.

Revan closes her eyes, and the two sit like that for awhile.

\--

_It’s been nearly a month since they’ve spoken. He left the ship to go planetside, and Revan thought he was gone for good. And so the place where she kept him in her mind and heart is locked away by the time he resurfaces on her flag ship._

_When she senses his presence, she stills her work. Revan is once again at the war table, spread across it are astronavigational charts, coordinates. They are marked up in her jagged, unclean handwriting. She is wearing her mask even though no one is with her._

_“They say you’re leaving.” Alek’s voice is raspy. He has not slept, either._

_Revan doesn’t look up from the charts, from the stories they tell only to her. “I am.”_

_“For how long?”_

_The silence between them is her answer._

_“Look at me,” he begs._

_Revan sets down her stylus. Turns._

_Alek stands before her, a broken thing. His fingers move under her chin, undoing the clasp on her mask. She lets him, then grabs it and sets it delicately on the war table. As if it would shatter._

_Revan doesn’t know what she looks like, but Alek’s expression softens and his fingers card through her hair. They undo the braid hanging over her shoulder, smooth out the knots. It’s like they’re children again, as he begins to redo it._

_“This is goodbye, then,” Revan states._

_Alek doesn’t answer. When he’s done he just. Stops. His hand slides from her hair to her shoulder. Neither of them move._

_She’s never had a life without him in it._

_Revan looks up when she hears his breath hitch. His eyes are bloodshot, rimming with tears._

_She doesn’t feel it, but hers are too. “I expected as much.”_

_Alek’s hand is shaking when he places it on the side of her neck. As his thumb runs over her cheek._

_He bends down to kiss her. It’s soft, brief._

_She doesn’t say sorry._ _  
_ _He walks away._

_\--_

_Three days later, he is waiting on the docking bay. There is none of the softness that was in him from what she thought was their final parting. Only a stubborn set to his jaw, something burning in his eyes._

_“Where are we going?” Is all he asks, sounding like he hates her for it. Maybe he does. Maybe he should._

_“The Unknown Regions.”_

_His body exhales with a shake of his shoulders. “Why?”_

_Revan steps past him, moving to the loading ramp of her ship._

_“The war is over,” she says, “So it’s time to find a new one.”_


End file.
